By Rodrigo Gutiérrez
SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Chile’s recent torrential rains have brought back to life – at least for now – reservoirs and lagoons that had all but dried up after years of drought, with dramatic images of cracked lake beds replaced by mirror-like still waters.
A years-long severe drought has decimated water supplies and hit local industries from mining to agriculture to bees in the Andean country, while also exacerbating tensions over water use.
Aculeo Lagoon became a symbol of the crisis, as dead cattle and fish carcasses lay on its cracked, dry surface, where a huge body of water once existed. This has now been dramatically replenished.
“The water is alive,” Gloria Contreras, manager of a camp in the area, told Reuters. “With the lagoon drying up, many jobs were lost. But now that has changed, everything has been reactivated – the businesses, even the smallest sellers”.
Recent rains that refilled lakes and sent snow falling on the bare slopes of the Andes mountains damaged hundreds of homes and left one person dead.
But the water has meant that other lagoons, such as Lake Peñuelas, an important source of water for the coastal tourist city of Valparaíso, which had dried up to a “puddle”, have substantially recovered.
“We haven’t seen the lake like this in over 20 years, it’s beautiful,” said Eduardo Torres, a resident of the nature reserve area.
Experts, however, believe that the recent rains will not compensate for the decade-long drought. A recent El Niño weather pattern brought low-pressure storms from the Pacific, heralding heavy rains during the Southern Hemisphere winter, replenishing aquifers and blanketing the Andes mountains with snow.
But a new La Nina is expected, which means drier weather.
“The central zone of Chile needs at least three, four or five years of normal and intense rainfall to fully recharge the aquifers,” said Patricio González, an agroclimatologist at the University of Talca, in the south of the country.
“Only then can the reservoirs return to normal levels,” he said.
Alex Godoy, director of the Sustainability Research Center at Universidad del Desarrollo, said the future climate outlook is not positive in terms of precipitation.
“The most likely outcome is that there will be no more rain,” said Godoy. “We should expect an increase in drought between now and the next two or three seasons.”
(Reporting by Rodrigo Gutierrez and Ivan Albarado; text by Fabian Cambero and Noelle Harff; editing by Adam Jourdan and Sandra Maler)
