Aqueducts and Sewers (AyA) indicated that as of the end of March, the balance of water levels in wells in the province of Guanacaste is positive and with the arrival of April, they foresee that area residents will not be affected by water shortage.
According to AyA, even though the summer has been strong during the beginning of 2015, it has not been as critical as 2014 since there has been some rainfall and some cloudy days in the region sometime during the summer, which has caused a decrease in water consumption by residents, benefiting groundwater wells to a large degree.
However, the fact that this summer has been milder than last summer does not mean that there has been a shortage of water in the province. The culprits are the climatic effect called El Niño and the presence of arsenic in the water in some communities in Guanacaste.
“With the problems of water scarcity, there was also the arsenic situation, which, although it is now completely resolved, forced AyA to incorporate the communities that were affected by this substance into their water supply systems, which generated an increase in the population served,” said German Araya, a representative of the Liberia AyA.
When asked about possible water outages during Easter Week, Araya commented that so far no one has established conducting water outages. Even so, Araya affirmed that the only communities that might be affected by outages are Cañas, Bagaces and Liberia, and they are making improvements to solve the problem by opening new wells in the communities of Quebrada Honda, Igaray and El Gallo.
The only weak point for this season are the coastal areas due to the high demand of visitors who come this time of year. Araya affirmed that they are taking precautions for this situation in case they need to resort to water tankers.
The ASADAs of Samara informed us that they do not have water outages scheduled unless there is an emergency.
“We have never had problems and we hope to not have them since we keep the wells monitored and at this time, they are fine with water,” said Eduardo Arnaez, who is in charge of the Samara ASADA.
But for the Playas de Nosara ASADA (beaches of Nosara) the scenario is different since this annual holiday week coincides with the end of the dry season and thus the lowest water tables of the year for their aquifer.
“The surge in visitors and decreased water production from our wells is a tremendous challenge. We anticipate some water outages and will do our best to make them as minimal in number and short in duration as possible,” said a publication on the ASADAs Facebook Page.
In the community of Nosara, the only problem that has resulted in emergency outages has been due to the pipe network that supplies the area, which is now old.
“We had problems a month ago, and each time it gets more complicated. Right now people come to visit and we are going to have more problems because the water levels of the wells are very low,” said Christoph Hubmann, in charge of the Nosara ASADA.
The inhabitants of the canton of Santa Cruz will not have any water shortage problems.
“As far as Santa Cruz goes, we don’t report any type of problems because this area has reserve wells,” German Araya added.
Like the inhabitants of Santa Cruz, the inhabitants of Nicoya won’t have any problems except for the communities of Cuesta Grande, Maquenco and Terciopelo of Samara, where water is being given by section, but the residents of these communities are already informed about the situation.
“Currently, the water systems are normal and there is no problem due to lack of production, so no water outages are planned unless there is an emergency,” said Max Gomez, in charge of the Nicoya AyA.
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