JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
In Puerto Rico, the government started rationing water last week. It's cutting service to homes on a rotating schedule. The island is in a drought, but its water crisis is not new. In one building in San Juan, residents have been dealing with dry faucets for months, as NPR's Adrian Florido reports.
ADRIAN FLORIDO, BYLINE: The tidy three-story condo building on Pomarrosa Street lost reliable water service about a year ago. Many days, like today, they get none. Other days, there's just enough water pressure for a trickle to reach the first floor where Sonia Palacios lives.
SONIA PALACIOS: That's when I fill my water for the bathrooms and for the plants and for all the other uses.
FLORIDO: You bring out some plastic containers and just stand here while the container fills up from the trickle?
PALACIOS: A few of them. A few of them (ph).
FLORIDO: How long does that take?
PALACIOS: (Laughter) Well, how does that - a lot. A lot. A lot.
FLORIDO: We sit on her back patio, surrounded by wilting plants.
PALACIOS: To not have water, it's like a handicap. I feel like there's nothing I can do.
FLORIDO: She can't really cook, wash dishes or do laundry. She often bathes by scooping water out of a bin. She and the nine other families in her building have rearranged their lives around their faucets.
Do you sometimes just walk by the sink or the shower, turn on the faucet just to see?
PALACIOS: Yes, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED NEIGHBOR #1: All the time (laughter).
PALACIOS: Yes, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED NEIGHBOR #2: You need it open.
UNIDENTIFIED NEIGHBOR #1: Every morning, every night.
PALACIOS: OK, yes (ph).
SUMMERS: A few of Palacios' neighbors have slid into her patio and are listening in. This is Norma Pena.
NORMA PENA: First thing we do when we wake up is go and check the faucet. If you go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, you go check the faucet. And second, if there is some water, you go to the chat and let everybody know there's water at least in the first floor.
FLORIDO: When that text message arrives, the families up on the third floor come downstairs to their neighbors' patios and fill their jugs from garden hoses.
PALACIOS: They know they need no permission if there's water.
FLORIDO: Norma Pena takes me up to visit a resident of the third floor.
PENA: Ligi.
FLORIDO: Ligi Rios is 72 years old. Her little terrace is full of jugs, most of them empty.
LIGI RIOS: (Speaking Spanish).
FLORIDO: She's made a gamble to use most of her stored water, she says, in the hopes there'll be running water tomorrow. Rios does not believe the government's explanation that this is all because of the drought.
RIOS: (Speaking Spanish).
FLORIDO: "It's pure corruption," Rios says, an opinion many Puerto Ricans share. El Niño has turned this summer into Puerto Rico's driest in more than a century. But the crisis has been made worse because the government has let the island's pipes deteriorate for decades. Its own data shows that 60% of the island's treated water is lost through leaks. Governor Jenniffer Gonzalez's office did not respond to a request for comment, but she has publicly said that water cuts will continue until rain replenishes reservoirs and that officials are working to improve infrastructure. Another neighbor, Yoamadil Caban, has her doubts.
YOAMADIL CABAN: This government does not give any maintenance a priority.
FLORIDO: Caban's daughter, Pauliana, is in the 11th grade.
PAULIANA CABAN: We need water. It's essential to do anything.
FLORIDO: She often doesn't know if she'll get a shower before school.
PAULIANA: So it really changes your habits and, like, your structure, day-to-day life.
(SOUNDBITE OF GATE OPENING)
FLORIDO: Norma Pena takes me back into her apartment. We check the taps.
There's just a tiny little gurgle, but nothing came out. What about the shower?
PENA: Let's just see if this one does one (ph).
(SOUNDBITE OF GURGLE)
FLORIDO: It was - it sounded like a little burp.
PENA: Uh-huh.
FLORIDO: It wanted to come out, but nothing came out.
PENA: That's the air going in again.
FLORIDO: She's used blue masking tape to seal two of her family's three toilets shut.
PENA: 'Cause it's almost like having a latrine in your house. And it's very unhealthy having that. So we have to manage that constantly.
FLORIDO: And in the kitchen, after she or her husband boil an egg, they let the water cool for the dog.
PENA: (Speaking Spanish). You have to reuse the water, especially the one used for cooking.
FLORIDO: What's his name?
PENA: This is Luna.
FLORIDO: Luna, her name. So she drinks egg-flavored water sometimes.
PENA: (Speaking Spanish). Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Exactly (ph).
PENA: (Laughter) Maybe even us (laughter).
FLORIDO: One apartment building, 10 families navigating Puerto Rico's water crisis, drinking egg-flavored water and finding other creative ways to use every drop they get. Adrian Florido, NPR News, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
(SOUNDBITE OF TOKIMONSTA'S "LAST NIGHT'S BLURRY MEMORIES") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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