This Monday, the mayor of Nogales, in the Valparaíso Region, ordered water rationing for a period of 4 hours in the town of El Melón, which is supplied by a municipal drinking water system, due to low levels of the pits.
This determination affects approximately 2,200 users of the municipal system, who will not have water resources between 2:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. The measure will be maintained until the layers are recovered.
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In this regard, Senator Kenneth Pugh (RN) affirmed that “this measure and many others must be adopted to face the serious drought that has been affecting the Valparaíso Region and a large part of the central zone of Chile for more than a decade.”
“For now, at the regional level, urgently analyze all the feasibility of connecting the water matrix of the utility to the drinking water systems that depend on wells, such as communal and rural ones,” he added.
He also pointed out that a very strong awareness campaign should be started to privilege and encourage water saving and also from a strategic point of view to continue advancing in the establishment of new desalination plants that allow the production of drinking water from seawater.
“It depends on us that water does not continue to be scarce if we use water rationally,” added the parliamentarian.
Pugh assured that “desalination is the last resort, first of all we have to save, change habits, such as changing the irrigation schedule, doing it at night; we have to reduce water consumption, reuse water, know how to make better use of water, for example the sanitation companies who are given resources in each bill for water treatment, once these waters are treated they are discharged into the sea”.
“We cannot miss them. We have to reconvert our waters and take better advantage of what we have by taking it to water sources and not necessarily to open aqueducts where an important part of the water is lost. Undoubtedly, what is there must be better managed, such as the distribution of water in tanker trucks, which is a patchwork solution that does not go to the root of the problem”, he stated.
