During this Sunday, regional authorities were monitoring the work implemented by the Aguas del Valle water utility to supply the conurbation and resume the restoration of the service.
Until noon on Sunday, and according to the reports provided by the Aguas del Valle water company, nearly 50 thousand clients were reported who were still affected between La Serena and Coquimbo by the water cut, due to the lowering of streams and , consequently, the turbidity of the Elqui River.
A situation that began to affect a large part of the population last Saturday and that was followed very closely by the regional authorities. Precisely, the Regional Presidential Delegate, Galo Luna Penna, together with the Superintendence of Sanitary Services, visited the water collection plant of the utility to verify the measures and the progress status of the replacement of the service.
The regional authority said that “we are verifying the production water situation on the ground and we have been able to see in detail, tour the entire plant and the plant has no problems. Water is being produced optimally, of high quality. Therefore, we hope that during the afternoon hours (Sunday), the services will gradually be restored so as to have the service restored for all customers in the conurbation.”
And the situation affected more than 70 thousand clients between both cities. That is why the Superintendency of Health Services began work on three lines of action. In this regard, the National Superintendent, Jorge Rivas, announced that “we have initiated an investigation. The explanations for why this emergency outage happened have not been completely clear to us, especially yesterday (Saturday). “We believe that the turbidity event did not warrant there being a cut of the magnitude.”
In addition, they were supervising that, in effect, the company applied action measures to restore the service and apply an alternative supply plan, so that customers could access drinking water through mobile tanks.
From the Aguas del Valle water company, they pointed out that “the declines in the El Arrayán and Marquesa streams generated a very important turbidity effect. This forced us to have to suspend the delivery of water through the intake for more than 30 hours and reinforce our production through the reserve of a dam of 47 thousand cubic meters that was prepared to produce water in case of an emergency. will generate this situation,” said Andrés Nazer, Manager of the company.
The contingency also mobilized the Seremi de Salud to verify how the cut affected the homes of La Serena and Coquimbo, taking water samples in the ponds to ensure that it was in good condition.
Paola Salas, Seremi de Salud, commented that “they are exceptional emergency situations, but they require that we all collaborate, especially in the sectors where they currently have water, to work in solidarity, privileging the consumption of drinking water, hygiene, washing of hands, children’s bathing, for example, but today what we have to do as a community is be united to get out of this situation.”
While Representative Víctor Pino, in his capacity as President of the Water Resources Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, stated that they will summon the company’s management to report on the water cut “to have a summary of what “what happened and to be able to have, from our oversight and representation role, the greatest clarity regarding this event that unfortunately affected the conurbation.”
