QCOSTARICA — Despite the constant cuts for hours and the complaints of Costa Ricans about the lack of water, the Instituto Costarricense de Acueductos y Alcantarillados (AyA) – water and sewer utility – reports a loss of 55.9% of the water resource within the Central Valley.
According to a report by the Contraloría General de la República (CGR) – Comptroller General, of every 10 liters destined for the Greater Metropolitan Area (GAM), only four reach homes, industries, schools and hospitals.
The study, which analyzed the data between 2019 and 2023, emphasizes that the most affected areas are the León XIII citadel, in Tibás, and La Legua de Aserrí, with a total of 22,299 people affected, and those who are supplied by the Guadalupe and San Juan de Dios plants, where said potable liquid is supplied to 24 districts.
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“This condition implies that the operator must take urgent and immediate actions to reduce this value, in order to ensure the sustainability of the resource and the service,” the document warned. Juan Manuel Quesada, executive president of the Institute, explained that this problem is one of the main weaknesses of the entity and is mainly due to an obsolete water supply system, which maintains damage that allows leaks.
“One of the great sins is that we do not bill for more than half of the water produced, because the uncounted water is lost in leaks, people steal it or it is even lost because there are social situations in which we cannot take away the service from people, for example, residentials like La Carpio, which are huge, and there people that do not have meters,” declared the official during the Radio Extra program Desde Buena Mañana.
Regarding this, the CGR concluded that “the optimization of the water supply systems operated by AyA is inefficient, since the results of the indicators revealed a stagnation in the management of losses.”
Among the shortcomings to be addressed by AyA, the controlling entity indicates that more than half of the meters are in poor condition and the management of leaks is deficient, which causes a reduction in available drinking water.
This problem is not new to the entity, since for a little over a decade there has been talk of unaccounted for water, so the country obtained a loan of US$130 million to work on a plan to reduce the figure by 17%, that is, to less than four liters lost for every 10.
These resources, granted by the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE), would be used in the Project for the Reduction of Unaccounted for Water and Optimization of Energy Efficiency (RANC-EE), which sought to improve the situation at the country level.
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However, despite the large amount, it has not been used efficiently according to the Ministry of Finance, which rates the performance level as alert, since only 11.25%, approximately US$14 million, has been financially executed.
“To date, 69% of the planned staff has been hired, that is, 31 of the 45 total positions, with 14 positions pending to be filled, of which 10 are executives and 4 are expert managers,” the portfolio stated in a report carried out during the first half of 2024.
Regarding this, the CGR also pointed out that “there is a risk in the investment, since once it is completed, the governing body of the water resource must assume its continuity and, to date, a mechanism that contemplates and guides the different actions required by the institution to ensure and maintain the required results is not clearly identified.”
Alejandro Calderón, deputy manager of AyA in charge of the GAM, explained that they have taken palliative measures to correct this problem since not only does it generate waste of liquid, but it also represents an economic cost for the institution.
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“We have done very important things, mainly in the most critical areas such as Alajuelita, Pavas, San Juan de Dios and Desamparados, where we have reduced nighttime pressures through instrumentation and the placement of specialized valves, since most leaks occur in the early morning hours,” he said.
According to estimates by the CGR, by 2024 the AyA lost just over ¢28 billion colones due to the unaccounted resource.
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