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SANTA CRUZ.- After finding irregularities at different points of Caleta Oliviathe provincial government denounced that officials of the state company were privately selling drinking water that belonged to the public network. Suspicions increased when this weekend they detected possible sabotage in the water service of the oil town, historically plagued by a lack of drinking water.
“If there is no water for my neighbors, much less for businesses. The joke is over.”assured the governor Claudio Vidal through an official statement in which it was announced what could lead to a political scandal, because it refers to the previous management of Alicia Kirchner.
“There has been business with water here all our lives. Enough of covering things up. The Caleta Olivia osmosis plant is a clear example of what happened in the province for so many years: corruption. “Small political groups that kept the assets of the people of Santa Cruz,” said the president.
During the weekend, Vidal toured without prior notice the place where the water is loaded in Caleta Olivia and detected three schools with strangled water valvesafter which he ordered the zonal managers to appear before the Court to file a complaint against the officials.
The statement from the provincial government assures that there are founded suspicions of boycott actions to affect the normal water supply in the city. These alleged sabotages would have as their objective “steal” the drinking water that is distributed among residential neighbors, to load it on trucks and sell it privately.
As he was able to reconstruct THE NATION According to those who are investigating the case, the alleged sabotage occurred in what is called “water loaders”, a kind of pipe with valves that allows opening and closing to load the tanks. “LThey closed you on purpose to deplete the city and load the trucks in which they sold the water directly or to third parties who in turn resold the water.“, they detailed.
Vidal ordered the zonal managers of the state company Servicios Públicos Sociedad del Estado (SPSE), Pablo Gordillo Regada and Alejandro Mamani, who appear in court to denounce the responsible officials. According to the provincial government, the operation would have been several years oldfor which the governor ordered the city police chief to carry out full control and custody of the keys and valves of the aqueducts, above the officials and workers of the company.
The government claims that they detected an “organization dedicated to stealing drinking water to sell it privately, affecting the population,” while exhaustive technical work was ordered, urgent solutions related to water supply, a study of the main investments to improve the service and everything that needs to be done regarding restructuring to coordinate that the work is done correctly.
Osmosis Plant
In 2015, during the Alicia Kirchner government, the first Reverse Osmosis Plant in Caleta Oliviadesigned for desalinate sea water in a reverse osmosis process to alleviate the lack of water in the town, with a production of 3000 cubic meters of water per day, requiring a capture of 300 cubic meters per hour of seawater.
“Today the plant is operating at 30%. The first problem, and the biggest, is that the water intake is built in a place that does not belong,” Vidal highlighted, while he assured that the plant worked well for only eight months and part of the technology it uses is not manufactured. further. Last week Vidal announced in Caleta Olivia the construction of an aqueduct from Cañadón Quintar to Caleta Olivia. It is planned to increase the flow of water for residents’ consumption by about 2,500 cubic meters per day.
