Bogotá’s Water Rationing Is a Preview

Last winter, the mountains that shape Bogotá’s skyline more than any skyscraper were on fire. Which is strange in a place known for its abundant rainfall, but Colombia has been running low on precipitation since June 2023. In the spring of this year, the mayor began rationing water—the city and its 11 million inhabitants split into nine zones, each of which would have no water once every 10 days. My brother-in-law had told me about the plan, but by the time my family and I moved to Colombia this past summer, I’d forgotten.

One afternoon, not two weeks after unpacking our bags, I tried to refill the half-empty water-purification tank in the kitchen, but when I opened the faucet, nothing happened. I went to the portero, to ask about the absence. He told me it was thanks to the mayor, though we both knew it wasn’t the mayor’s fault.

In Colombia, climate change, coupled with deforestation in the Amazon and El Niño weather patterns that have become more intense, has caused a punishing and prolonged drought. The San Rafael reservoir rests above the city and is replenished by water collected in the country’s páramos––a high-alpine ecosystem known for its nearly constant moisture; as of April, when the rationing began, the reservoir was at less than 20 percent capacity. Natasha Avendaño, the general manager of El Acueducto de Bogotá, the organization responsible for the city’s water infrastructure, recently reported that this August was the driest month in the 55 years since the city started keeping track. Restrictions are unlikely to be lifted anytime soon.

In our community WhatsApp chat, residents remind one another when our turn for rationing draws near. I fill up containers and deposit them throughout the house: a bucket in each of the bathrooms and a huge stockpot in the kitchen. I’m careful not to exceed what I think we will need to get by. El Acueducto sets monthly caps for households, and fines those who exceed their limits.

Getting millions of people to use less water is a complicated dance, but the city tracks our collective effort by publishing the daily consumption rate and the fullness of the reservoirs from which we draw our water. “You’re nothing without water,” Angélica Villarraga, who lives in San Cristóbal and makes a living cleaning homes throughout the city, told me. Avendaño has said she hopes that rationing augments sentiments exactly like that one, and not just on days when the tap runs dry—that it helps residents recognize their dependence on water, and the need to conserve it during lean times.  

El Acueducto was formed around the turn of the last century to guarantee affordable and clean drinking water in the growing metropolis, and now manages more than 30 percent of the forested mountain reserve that abuts the city. In recent years, the organization has opened nearly a dozen hiking trails in Los Cerros Orientales so that residents make the connection between these mountains and the water that fuels their lives. “The reality is there isn’t enough of this very basic resource,” Jhoan Sebastián Mora Pachón, who manages the Kilómetro 11 y 12 Quebradas trail on behalf of El Acueducto, told me. “The more people respect where the water comes from, the more likely they are to make little changes in their lives to conserve it.” Then he added, “When it is our turn for rationing, we cook more simple meals, and we only wash the dishes once, at night. It’s nice, in a way.”

I have spent much of the past 15 years writing about frontline communities affected by climate change, in particular those where higher tides and stronger storms are forcing people to reimagine the way they live. I have learned that letting go of what you think you can’t live without is something a person is more willing to do if they feel that the injustice is shared equally among all. In New York City’s Staten Island, I watched neighbors band together to ask the state to purchase and demolish their flood-prone homes—on the condition that the land itself would go back to nature. Joseph Tirone, a leader of the buyout movement put it this way: “Everybody was pretty much at the same level of wealth, or lack of wealth. If their homes were going to … be knocked down so some developer could build a mansion or a luxury condo, they were not leaving. They’d stay there, they’d rot there, they’d drown there, but they were not leaving.” Eventually the state agreed with residents’ petitions, purchasing and razing hundreds of homes, the property itself becoming part of New York City’s network of parks.

The rolling rationing that moves across Bogotá—and the frustration that comes with the disruption—is shared, too, and it generates, if not solidarity exactly, a feeling of mutual inconvenience. Sandra Milena Vargas, who works as a nanny in my neighborhood, told me, “We wake up early, get one last shower, just like you.” Whether one has hired help or works as a domestic laborer, every household revolves around water in much the same way.

Doing environmental good is often framed in terms of personal sacrifice––less air travel, adopting a meat-free diet, turning off the heat. Water rationing in Bogotá is different in one key way: It’s a decision taken by a central institution to ensure the health and well-being of the entire city. The places that one might turn to in times of crisis––schools and hospitals, for instance––have water no matter what, to help keep the most vulnerable residents safe, but otherwise everyone is compelled to sacrifice together. “It is something we are used to, even anticipate,” Daniel Osorio, whose family has owned the Unión Libre café in the city’s Úsaquen district for more than nine years, told me. “We bring in five-gallon jugs to run the espresso machine. You adapt,” he said.

These sacrifices do take a toll. “Over time you lose confidence in the city to function,” Osorio said. “That’s the real shame.” But what if periodic water rationing weren’t only implemented when the well runs dry? In the future the world is facing, preparation might mean anticipating inevitable shortages, rather than promising they’ll never occur. Imagine, for instance, that governments designated a day without water once every four months—a fire drill, but for drought. Embracing periodic utilities restrictions could be a precautionary measure, a way to prepare for and live on our climate disrupted planet.

I’ve been thinking about this as, over the past few months, I have watched Valencia, Spain, be inundated by nearly a year’s worth of rain in a single day; the central high plains of the United States and much of southern Texas descend into drought; and residents across the Southeast reel after back-to-back hurricanes. No amount of preparation would have kept the French Broad River in North Carolina from rerouting straight through the center of Asheville. But those living in communities that were without power and cell service and potable water weeks afterwards might have had more backup systems in place—more buckets of water peppered throughout more homes, more generators, more solar-powered cellphone-service extenders—and muscle memory to maneuver through them, if a rationing drill had compelled them to practice.  

Doing this kind of adaptive work also teaches one to cope with change. Resilience is a muscle that must be regularly exercised to keep from atrophying. And, perhaps most important, when neighbors ride out small and regular disruptions to daily life together, in many cases they develop information-sharing networks––such as our community WhatsApp chat––so that when a hurricane hits or a heat wave dismantles the grid, they already have in place the kinds of communication hubs and community organizations that make survival through upheaval easier.

We can learn to be flexible in the face of change, and one task of our governing institutions is to teach us how. In July, California imposed permanent water restrictions on towns and cities, an attempt to locally respond to droughts that are expected to only get worse in the coming decades. In places where extreme heat regularly overwhelms the grid, municipalities might implement “fire drill” days without electricity. In the Northeast, where ice storms are on the rise, perhaps cutting the gas from time to time might make more sense. Periodic resource rationing would prepare us for a future that is sure to contain more days without––without water, or electricity, or heat––than today. The only thing that is certain is that the things we depend upon are no longer dependable. What better way to become more resilient to external shocks than to practice?