Fresh Water In San José Could Be Scarce In 2015
September 22nd, 2009 | by admin |Thousands of residents of San José may have to start rationing water come 2015 according to a report by the Acueductos y Alcantarillados (AyA) which since 2008 has been been attempting to contract an expert to determine locations where to collect water.
The Spanish daily, La Nación, reports that the greater metropolitan area will be hardest affected by a water shortage that is mainly due to numerous appeals that have delayed necessary projects to guarantee the supply of drinking water.
The delays in awarding the contract for the study, which is required before any construction of infrastructure can begin, is jeopardizing the AyA’s ability to deliver fresh water.
Ricardo Sancho, president of the AyA, is hopeful that the utility can award the study contract in the coming weeks.
However, the clock is running out. The study is expected to take about 20 months to complet, and only then a master plan for the supply and distribution of water in San José can then be put into place.
According to Sancho, is the contract is awarded next month (October), the earliest the report could be available would be in June 2011, then time is required to build the aqueducts. Sancho said that if there are no more appeals, crossing his fingers, fresh water for San José will continue to flow.
The AyA chief explained that the Orosi aqueduct that is currently supplying much of the water to San José will not be able to keep pace with the demand that is expected by 2015.
Orosi went online some 22 years ago and currently provides 2.000 litres of fresh water per second, depending on the season, of which some 1.800 litres per second make it to San José, the rest used up by the residents of Cartago.
The current aqueduct that feeds the metropolitan area has a capacity of 1.1 million residents. The AyA projects the growth to be by 400.000 by 2015.
