Drinking Water Supply in the Region of Antofagasta (Chile): A Challenge between Past, Present and Future

Abstract

Since the mid-nineteen century, when the first mining companies were established in the region of Antofagasta to extract saltpeter, mining managers and civil authorities have always had to face a number of problems to secure a water supply sufficient for the development of industrial activities and society. The unique features of the region, namely the scarcity of rainfall, the high concentration of arsenic in freshwaters and the increasing pressure of the mining sector, have made the supply of drinking water for local communities a challenge. In the 1950s, the town of Antofagasta experienced a serious drinking water crisis. The 300 km long aqueduct starting from the Toconce catchment, opened in 1958, temporarily ended this shortage of drinking water but created an even more dramatic problem. The concentration of arsenic in the water consumed by the population had grown by approx. ten times, reaching the value of 0.860 mg/L and seriously affecting people’s health. The water treatment plants (WTPs) which were installed starting from the 1970s in the region (namely the Old and New Salar del Carmen in Antofagasta and Cerro Topater in Calama, plus the two recent desalination plants in Antofagasta and Tocopilla), have ensured, since 2014, that the drinking water coverage in the urban areas was practically universal (>99.9%). However, the rural areas have continued to experience significant shortcomings regarding their capacity to ensure the quality and continuity of the water supply service in the long run. Presently, approx. 42% of the rural population of the region of Antofagasta does not have a formal supply of drinking water. The recent amendments to the Chilean Water Code (March 2022) and the interventions carried out in the framework of the Agua Potable Rural (APR) program were intended to reduce the socio-ecological inequalities due to the lack of drinking water in the semi-concentrated and isolated rural population.

Water Quality Classification and Machine Learning Model for Predicting Water Quality Status—A Study on Loa River Located in an Extremely Arid Environment: Atacama Desert

“…Therefore, data standardization was used as described in Equation ( 1), which was not developed to discard data with a 0 value. This partially supports choosing RF as the algorithm to generate the predictive models, since this algorithm shows greater tolerance to input data errors, as indicated by previous studies, such as [28][29][30].…”

“…Loa River receives surface and groundwater from Salado River, located near Chiu Chiu. Salado River is a tributary of El Tatio geothermal field and is known for its high concentrations of arsenic (As), being the main source of this toxic metal in the Loa River basin [29].…”

Childhood Obesity and Plasma Micronutrient Deficit of Chilean Children between 4 and 14 Years Old

“…From the point of view of water quality, studies from 2006 to 2016 showed that the drinking water quality in Antofagasta was acceptable based on the guidelines because there were no significant differences observed between the types of water and only a few minor breaches were observed compared with other regions in Chile. In our study, the population was derived from urban zones where the drinking water quality is similar to that of other countries [ 35 ].…”

Quality and security of drinking water supply in the south of the Democratic Republic of Congo

“…Cobalt, Zinc, iron, Cadmium, gold [3]…The historic shortage of fresh water is currently aggravated by the effects of climate change [4]. Secondly, the region's surface watercourses are not only rare, but also of poor quality, due to their high salinity and high chemical element content [5] in view of the negative impact of the fact that the region is a significant reserve of copper, lithium, molybdenum, and natural nitrates [6]. Today, new housing developments require private water supply either by manual or industrial drilling, the depths of which vary from one region to another and whose supply network uses polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipes, abandoning such as galvanized pipes.…”