Dought Forces Water Rationing

Venezuela initiated water rationing this week in an effort to parry off drought effects. The government rolled out preservation measures that include rolling cuts to water service.

State-owned utility Hidrocapital said the efforts will continue through the first quarter of 2010. Venezuela President Hugo ChavezHugo Chavez has been lobbying the major cities’ residents to take additional steps to reduce their use of water. His suggestions included taking three minute showers.

While the government has blamed weather as the source of the drought and the subsequent preservation efforts, critics contend that the administrations lack of infrastructure investment and planning exposed the country to the recent droughts.

The Camatagua Reservoir, which supplies Caracaswith its main source of water, has depleted for more than two years, according to Hidrocapital.

This is the second time in the last decade that water rationing has been imposed.

In the neighboring state of Miranda State, the Lagartijo Reservoir is at the lowest level ever recorded.

"There will be programmed interruptions in service, with the goal of recuperating the levels of the principal reservoirs that flow to the city and that were affected by the scarce rains this year," Hidrocapital President Alejandro Hitcher said at a news conference announcing the rationing.

Beside households, schools will have to curtail their water usage, the government said.

Water use at hospitals will remain immune from any rationing.

The government says that the El Nino phenomenon -- unusually warm waters in the equatorial Pacific that affects weather around the globe – is causing the drought.

Venezuela's National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology added another novel theory called quasi-biennial oscillation, which affects winds in the stratosphere.

"This other phenomenon," the institute published in a statement, "has a relationship with the rains, and is capable of modifying or changing the magnitude and impacts of the effects that El Nino has brought."