When the water runs out

Ecuador's crops, its power grid and the drinking water for its largest city are all threatened by climate change.

Editor's note: Early Signs: Reports From a Warming Planet is a joint project of the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Salon and NPR's "Living on Earth." The series runs Fridays through May 5 in Salon, and you can find radio versions of each story on "Living on Earth's" Web site. Read about how the series came into being here.

By Pauline Bartolone

Read more: Politics, News, Ecuador, Climate Change, Early Signs: Reports from a Warming Planet

Photo by Pauline Bartolone

Segundo Alfredo Tabango shows his ailing plants in Cuicocha Central, Ecuador.

April 7, 2006 | QUITO, Ecuador -- Lined up behind glass and concrete on a cliffside southeast of Quito, five giant hydroelectric turbines at the Guangopolo plant lay idle. Oversize pastel-colored tangles of steel tubes, built to transform liquid into energy, sit empty -- in recent years there simply hasn't been enough water to pump through them. As a result, production of vital energy that helps light up Ecuador's nearby capital city has waned dramatically.

"In the past 30 years, we've lost 40 to 50 percent of the water that comes through the plant," says Manuel Moreno, one of the engineers at Empresa Electrica Quito, the capital city's electric company.

The dwindling waters at Guangopolo are signs of what could be a stark future not only for hydropower, but for water resources throughout the country. Melting glaciers and irregular rainfall -- effects linked by scientists to global climate change -- have already begun threatening Ecuador's electrical grids, agricultural production and drinking-water supplies.

Quito is surrounded by an intricate network of open canals and rivers traversing the surrounding ridges of the Andes Mountains. The Guangopolo plant gets water from two rivers, Rio San Pedro and Rio Pita, which depend on precipitation and the melt of two glaciers, Cotopaxi and Iliniza. The Rio Pita's flow has decreased by 50 percent in the past 20 years. Glaciologists with Ecuador's National Institute on Hydrology and Meteorology attribute the decrease to the loss of a third of the glacier atop Cotopaxi in the past 50 years. They say drought conditions, deforestation and irrigation practices may also play a role, but no studies of those factors have been done to date.

Cotopaxi is not the only glacier in rapid retreat. In the past 75 years, temperatures have increased across Ecuador, the increases ranging from 0.5 degrees Celsius on the coast to 1.5 degrees in the Andes. Leading glaciologists predict that many Andean glaciers below 17,000 feet -- stretching as far south as Bolivia -- could disappear in the next few decades. Some Andean glaciers have already disappeared, such as the Cotacachi volcano in northern Ecuador, leaving mountain communities distraught over dried-up water sources.

The problem will soon reach the bigger cities. "In 20 to 30 years we will have a problem with the potable water supply," says Bolivar Caceres, a glaciologist with the hydrology and meteorology institute. As the glaciers recede, he says, there will be less water for Quito, where 70 percent of the water comes from surrounding ice caps. "Once a glacier is lost, it doesn't come back," Caceres adds. "It's a nonrenewable resource."

For the time being, residents of Quito don't notice much disruption in water service. Quito's municipal water company, EMAAP-Q, is pumping hundreds of liters of water per second into one of its treatment plants that runs a constant deficit from Rio Pita. The massive reservoir that stabilizes the system is La Mica glacial lake below Antizana, another ice-capped volcano whose runoff provides drinking water to a third of Quito. But Antizana's runoff will not be able to rescue the rest of the EMAAP-Q's water system for long: The lake's water level goes down 5 meters a year -- and just like Cotopaxi, Antizana's glacier has lost a third of its volume in the past half century.

Ecuadorean officials realize they can't stand by and wait for the large reserves of frozen water to run out. The Quito water company is planning to complete a $700 million project by 2020 to supply the city from the Rios Orientales, a robust river system east of the Andes.

Next page: The pain caused by Ecuador's worst drought in 40 years