Infrastructure Management Planning – Addressing Drought in Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico is facing one of the worst droughts in its history. On the eastern side of the island, the government has been forced to start extreme water rationing – something that hasn’t happened in 20 years.

Residents are caught up in a rationing cycle that leaves them without water for 24 hours at a time, with 160,000 people forced to go without for 48 hours, then with for 24 hours, causing frenzied panic to store water while it’s available.

Many have adopted very creative measures to save as much water as possible, such as using toilet cisterns for hand washing and garbage bins for dishwashing. The drought is costing the government up to $15 million per month that it cannot afford.

The New York Times reports:

“But Puerto Rico is already looking for ways to handle the next drought. It recently finished dredging a part of the Carraizo reservoir to remove decades of sediment and sand; maintenance of the reservoirs has suffered during the economic crisis.

Without more money, options are limited. Dredging would help, Mr. Lazaro said, but so would bringing in more water from the west side of the island and restarting old wells in the north.

But what is needed now — a lot of rain, not just stray showers — is beyond the island’s control. Asked when he thought the natural order would resume and it would pour in Puerto Rico, Mr. Saldaña pointed skyward: “Ask him,” he said.”

This drought hasn’t been as widely publicized as California’s, but it is affecting residents every bit as much, if not more.

As noted in the Inframanage.com coverage of the California drought, impacts included lowered service levels, more expenditure, and loss of revenue. Puerto Rico is suffering from these impacts.

Drought planning and management within an infrastructure management planning framework impacts as follows:

• Levels of Service:  planning for and communication of changes in levels of service.  This can include water use bans, outages, and restricted supply.  Implementation of this is part of the operational activities
• Demand: This may include longer-term water source planning (such as 50-year strategy water plans), analysis of population and usage changes (for example more single-occupant households with a defined water footprint) and then a structured determination of what is required – new wells, reservoirs/tanks, etc.
• Risk: Analysis of the likelihood of drought and other natural events affecting water supply.  Analysis of the risks and costs associated with events.  Development of mitigation and contingency planning for risk events
• Asset Lifecycle Management:  This can include operational, maintenance and asset renewal considerations around the management of water supply when facing drought restrictions.  Actions can include leak detection/fixes, pipeline repairs, replacement of assets, and construction of new assets if required
• Financial Management: Drought is likely to bring higher operating and maintenance expenditure at the same time as falling revenue.  The impacts of this should be recognized and managed

With modern more advanced long-range weather and climate planning, and a better understanding of weather cycle oscillations there is more available information for the prediction of drought incidence.

It is better to do the analysis and put in place infrastructure asset management planning and mitigation measures before being in the middle of a drought cycle, as this allows a phased and not much more costly emergency response to the issues.