Ecuador: When the water runs out

Ecuador’s crops, its power grid and the drinking water for its largest city are all threatened by climate change.

Lined up behind glass and concrete on a cliffside southeast of Quito, five giant hydroelectric turbines at the Guangopolo plant lay idle. Oversize pastel-colored tangles of steel tubes, built to transform liquid into energy, sit empty — in recent years there simply hasn’t been enough water to pump through them. As a result, production of the vital energy that helps light up Ecuador’s nearby capital city has slowed to a trickle.

“In the past 30 years, we’ve lost 40 to 50 percent of the water that comes through the plant,” says Manuel Moreno, one of the engineers at Empresa Electrica Quito, the capital city’s electric company.

The dwindling waters at Guangopolo are signs of what could be a stark future not only for hydropower, but for water resources throughout the country. Melting glaciers and irregular rainfall — effects linked by scientists to global climate change — have already begun threatening Ecuador’s electrical grids, agricultural production and drinking-water supplies.

..The problem will soon reach the bigger cities. “In 20 to 30 years we will have a problem with the potable water supply,” says Bolivar Caceres, a glaciologist with the hydrology and meteorology institute. As the glaciers recede, he says, there will be less water for Quito, where 70 percent of the water comes from surrounding ice caps. “Once a glacier is lost, it doesn’t come back,” Caceres adds. “It’s a nonrenewable resource.”

Climate Ark; original story from Salon