Shower together or not at all, mayor of drought-stricken Bogota urges couples

The mayor of Bogota is asking couples in the Colombian capital to shower together — or perhaps not at all — in an effort to save water amid an ongoing shortage that has reached crisis levels.

“If you are not going to leave your house on Sunday or any other day of the week, take advantage of it and do not take a bath," Mayor Carlos Fernando Galán also told residents.

His advice comes as several Bogota neighbourhoods were cut off from the water grid on Thursday to protect already low water levels at reservoirs. They have been drying up due to lack of rain caused in part by this year's El Nino, a climatic phenomenon that warms the Pacific Ocean and affects weather patterns around the world.

The Chuza and San Rafael reservoirs, part of the system that provides 70 per cent of the city's drinking water, are at their lowest levels since at least the 1980s. City officials have responded by dividing

Bogota into nine zones, each of which will be cut off from the water grid for 24 hours in rotation.

“Let's not waste a drop of water in Bogota at this time,” Galán told reporters. “That will help us so that these restrictions can be lifted more quickly or reduced.” He did not say how long the measures would last.

The lack of rain is also raising fears of power blackouts, since Colombia gets about two thirds of its electricity from hydroelectric power. The nation's power market operator warned that low reservoir levels may spark outages at peak times.

Power generation reservoirs are holding about 32 per cent of their capacity, the operator Compania de Expertos en Mercados SA said in a letter to the government March 30.

Bogota is not the only Latin American city forced to take action to combat drought. Mexico City has also been rationing water supplies in the past month, and Guatemala declared an emergency on Wednesday as it struggles to tame wildfires.