Is Santa Marta's water problem getting worse?

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Is Santa Marta’s water problem actually getting worse now?

Yes. Santa Marta’s water security is getting worse again today, even though a few parts of the system are healthier than they were several years ago.

The clearest deterioration is happening on the supply side. ESSMAR entered the current dry period with falling river flows, then reported that El Niño and the severe summer were reducing the water available to its treatment plants. At Mamatoco, incoming flow fell from about 750 to 560 liters per second between normal operating conditions and the early stage of the current dry period. El Roble fell from roughly 500 to 450 liters per second.

Those declines arrived before several additional failures. Damage to a 28-inch main affected around 19,400 users across 58 neighborhoods. The Piedras intake was temporarily closed soon afterward. Other recent incidents have included leaks, pumping problems and unauthorized interventions around the network.

The latest climate outlook makes the situation harder. IDEAM now says El Niño conditions are strengthening, with more than a 90% probability of continuing into early 2027 and a 69% probability of reaching the agency’s “very strong” category during the final part of this year.

There is one important counterargument. Santa Marta appears to have improved average water continuity since the conditions that triggered the national intervention of ESSMAR in 2021, and official drinking-water quality has improved considerably. We therefore would not describe the whole water system as deteriorating.

What is worsening right now is Santa Marta’s margin for error. The city still lacks enough dependable supply, still loses an enormous amount of water and still needs tankers when the rivers fall. A stronger drought is now testing that same weak system before its biggest planned solutions are ready.

What we checked	Situation now	Direction	Our reading
River supply	Flows into major treatment plants have fallen	Worse	Immediate pressure
Climate	El Niño is strengthening	Worse	Higher drought risk
Average continuity	Better than around the 2021 intervention	Better	Real progress
Water losses	Planning baseline remains around 58%	Poor	Structural problem
Water quality	IRCA remains below 5%	Better	Clear improvement
New large supply	Desalination project still pre-operation	Unchanged for residents	Relief has not arrived

Has Santa Marta always had this kind of water shortage?

Yes. Santa Marta has had a serious water shortage for years, which is exactly why the current deterioration cannot be blamed on one bad summer.

Engineering research was already identifying a large mismatch between Santa Marta’s water demand and its ability to supply that demand almost a decade ago. A 2017 study reported non-revenue water of 46.8% and described water scarcity as a central problem for the city.

Conditions later became worse. When Superservicios intervened ESSMAR in 2021, average water continuity was only about 70.8%, roughly 17 hours a day, while water losses were close to 60%.

ESSMAR was still reporting a large underlying shortage in 2023. The utility estimated that the city faced roughly a 26% supply deficit during wetter periods and about 53% during dry periods, with reported gaps reaching around 1,400 liters per second in the dry season. The percentages and liters-per-second figures came from different calculations, so we should not force them into one perfectly comparable series. They still point in the same direction: Santa Marta has repeatedly lacked enough reliable water for full demand.

Today’s problems therefore sit on top of an old deficit. What has changed is the amount of pressure being placed on that deficit.

Period	What was happening	What it tells us
Around 2017	Non-revenue water measured at 46.8%	Structural problems were already serious
2021	Losses near 60%; average continuity around 17 h/day	The system reached a severe operational low
2023	ESSMAR still reported large seasonal supply deficits	Intervention had not removed the basic shortage
2024	Tanker distribution expanded during El Niño	Drought again exposed the same weakness
Now	Falling river flows and another strengthening El Niño	The old deficit is under fresh pressure

Are Santa Marta’s rivers giving the city less water right now?

Yes. Santa Marta’s main river-fed treatment plants are currently receiving less water, and this is hard evidence that the immediate situation has deteriorated.

ESSMAR reported during the early part of the current dry season that inflow at Mamatoco had fallen from about 750 to 560 liters per second. That is a drop of roughly 190 liters per second, or about 25%. El Roble fell from approximately 500 to 450 liters per second, another 10% reduction.

Those numbers are especially important because Santa Marta depends heavily on the Manzanares, Piedras and Gaira river systems. Their flows vary considerably between wet and dry periods, and the city has no huge reservoir capable of smoothing that variation over long stretches.

Past droughts show how far the decline can go. ESSMAR reported during a previous severe dry period that flows in the Manzanares, Piedras and Gaira rivers had fallen close to 50%.

So when residents experience lower pressure or longer interruptions these days, there is a measurable supply problem underneath the complaints. The treatment plants simply have less river water available to work with.

Is Santa Marta simply running out of water?

No. Santa Marta still has several water sources, but the city cannot turn them into enough reliable tap water throughout the year.

The city draws surface water from the Manzanares, Piedras and Gaira systems and supplements those sources with groundwater wells. The surrounding Sierra Nevada receives substantial rainfall in parts of the year, while aquifers provide another source that can help when surface flows fall.

The problem appears when we follow the water from source to household. River flows can collapse during dry periods. Heavy rainfall can create another problem by pushing turbidity so high that treatment plants have to reduce output or stop temporarily. ESSMAR had exactly that problem at Mamatoco during heavy rains earlier this year, when muddy source water and landslides disrupted treatment.

Groundwater helps, but wells need pumps, electricity, maintenance and careful management of the aquifer. The distribution network then loses a very large amount of the water entering the system.

Santa Marta therefore has water around it while still struggling to deliver dependable potable water. That is why the city can face shortages during drought and treatment interruptions during intense rainfall.

Is Santa Marta wasting an extraordinary amount of its water?

Yes. Santa Marta still loses far too much water, and the scale is large enough to weaken almost every supply solution the city is considering.

A 2017 engineering study put non-revenue water at 46.8%. By the time ESSMAR was intervened in 2021, Superservicios was reporting losses around 60%. The latest large infrastructure plan for Santa Marta still uses approximately 58% as its baseline and aims eventually to bring the figure down to 27%.

The exact percentages are not perfectly interchangeable because non-revenue water includes several things: physical leaks, illegal connections, inaccurate meters and water that is supplied but never billed correctly. Still, a city operating around the high-50% range has an obvious efficiency problem.

The history is pretty ugly. Losses appear to have worsened sharply between the earlier engineering study and the 2021 crisis, then improved only slightly afterward. This is not a system that has already fixed its network and simply needs another source.

The planned desalination plant makes the issue even more important. Desalinated water costs money and energy to produce. Sending expensive new water into a network with extremely high losses would leave a huge amount of value on the table.

Measure	Earlier level	More recent baseline/target	What changed?
Non-revenue water	46.8% around 2017	—	Already very high
Losses around intervention	—	~60% in 2021	Became worse
Current planning baseline	—	~58%	Little improvement from the crisis level
Long-term target	—	27%	Requires a major network overhaul

Has Santa Marta at least improved how many hours people get water?

Yes. Santa Marta appears to provide more hours of water on average than it did around the 2021 ESSMAR crisis, and that improvement deserves real weight.

Superservicios reported average continuity of 70.8% around the time of the intervention. That works out to roughly 17 hours of water service per day across the system. Some sectors were much worse, including areas receiving fewer than ten hours.

A more recent national infrastructure profile uses 20.5 hours per day as Santa Marta’s planning baseline. If we compare those figures cautiously, average continuity has improved by about 3.5 hours per day.

That is a meaningful gain. It is also one reason we would reject the idea that Santa Marta’s entire water system has simply become worse every year.

But averages hide some brutal local interruptions. A city averaging 20.5 hours can still have neighborhoods that go days without normal service when their part of the network loses pressure or when a major pipe fails.

So Santa Marta has made progress on average continuity while still failing a tougher test: can residents count on the water being there when the system is stressed? For many neighborhoods, the answer remains no.

Why does Santa Marta still need so many water tankers?

Santa Marta still relies heavily on tankers because the normal network cannot supply every neighborhood reliably during periods of scarcity.

The scale has been large for several years. During the 2024 El Niño emergency, the District said its Ruta del Agua program reached 161 neighborhoods and more than 40,000 families in one month through 2,103 tanker deliveries. On one reported day that year, ESSMAR delivered 1.824 million liters across 43 neighborhoods.

Alternative distribution remains active today. ESSMAR said recently that tankers and other alternative means were serving 90 neighborhoods while the utility dealt with the summer water emergency.

One recent ESSMAR statement claimed more than 51 billion liters had been delivered through alternative means over three months. We would not use that figure literally. Spread over roughly 90 days, it would imply an average flow of more than 6,500 liters per second, which is far out of line with the scale of Santa Marta’s conventional water system and earlier tanker reports. The published figure likely contains a unit, transcription or aggregation problem.

The safer conclusion is simpler: emergency distribution has remained normal enough to have its own routing system, neighborhood prioritization and daily operating criteria.

A city can use tankers intelligently during a temporary emergency. Santa Marta has needed them too repeatedly for us to treat them as an occasional backup.

Is Santa Marta’s growth making the water shortage harder to fix?

Yes. Santa Marta is trying to close an old water deficit while the number of people and businesses demanding water keeps growing.

Superservicios has estimated that Santa Marta needs at least 600 additional liters per second to cover future demand for a population already above half a million. That gives us a useful order of magnitude: the city does not need a few extra wells or a small pumping upgrade. It needs hundreds of additional liters every second.

Tourism makes the peaks harder. Santa Marta regularly absorbs very large visitor flows during holidays and festivals, while Rodadero, Bello Horizonte, Pozos Colorados and the wider southern corridor contain a dense concentration of hotels, apartments and tourism businesses.

ESSMAR’s own behavior shows that the tourism peak matters operationally. Before high-demand holiday periods, the utility performs preventive maintenance specifically to strengthen the water system. A new pump at Irotama increased distribution there from 140 to 178 liters per second and was installed explicitly to improve supply in the tourism corridor.

That 38-liter-per-second gain helps thousands of users, but compare it with the wider city. Authorities say Santa Marta needs at least 600 additional liters per second. One useful local upgrade covers only about 6% of that amount.

Tourists did not create Santa Marta’s water crisis. They make an already tight system tighter during exactly the periods when demand jumps.

Are broken pipes, illegal diversions and other disruptions now a major reason people lose water?

Yes. Santa Marta’s water network is so tight that a single damaged pipe or blocked intake can now remove water from tens of thousands of people.

A recent example is unusually clear. A contractor’s excavator damaged a 28-inch main carrying treated water from Mamatoco. ESSMAR estimated that around 19,372 users across 58 neighborhoods were affected.

The following day, the Piedras intake was temporarily closed by a local community while Santa Marta was already dealing with low river flows. ESSMAR said the closure further reduced the amount of water entering Mamatoco.

Unauthorized interference has caused even larger shocks before. In 2025, ESSMAR reported that an illegal blockage at the Manzanares intake cut approximately 350 liters per second, around 45% of the plant’s normal inflow, potentially affecting more than 96,000 accounts.

Leaks continue to appear as well. ESSMAR has recently had to repair leaks in the Manzanares line and identified additional potable-water leaks during roadworks in the Zuana area.

We cannot prove from these examples that Santa Marta’s pipes are breaking more often than five years ago. What we can say confidently is that each failure carries an unusually high cost because the system has so little spare capacity. When supply is already short, losing another 100 or 300 liters per second hurts immediately.

Recent disruption	Reported scale	Why it was serious
Damaged 28-inch main	~19,372 users; 58 neighborhoods	Large central distribution line lost
Manzanares blockage in 2025	~350 L/s	About 45% of normal Mamatoco inflow
Piedras intake closure	Reduced intake into Mamatoco	Happened during already-low river flows
Recent network leaks	Multiple local repairs	Adds losses to an already inefficient system

Is Santa Marta’s tap water becoming less safe?

No. Santa Marta’s official drinking-water quality has actually improved, and scarcity is a much clearer problem today than declining potability.

Water quality was one of the concerns around the period that led to ESSMAR’s intervention. Superservicios reported samples above the 5% IRCA threshold during 2019 and 2020, meaning the water did not consistently remain in Colombia’s “without risk” category.

That picture improved afterward. ESSMAR reported IRCA readings below 5% from late 2022 onward, and the utility again stated recently that the city’s drinking water had remained below the 5% threshold over the preceding years.

We should still distinguish treated tap water from raw river water. Research on the Gaira and Manzanares systems has found microbial contamination and other water-quality pressures in the rivers themselves. Those findings matter for people using untreated sources and for the amount of treatment required at the plants.

They do not show a current citywide decline in the quality of properly treated water leaving ESSMAR’s system.

For now, Santa Marta’s bigger water risk is whether enough treated water reaches residents consistently.

Is Santa Marta fixing the existing water system fast enough?

No. Santa Marta has more repair and upgrade work underway than before, but the improvements are still too small compared with the size of the underlying shortage.

There has been tangible progress. ESSMAR has maintained and upgraded Mamatoco and El Roble, rehabilitated wells, repaired distribution lines and increased the Irotama pumping station from about 140 to 178 liters per second.

The scale is the problem. That Irotama upgrade added 38 liters per second. Superservicios says Santa Marta needs at least another 600 liters per second to cover future demand. One of the city’s more visible recent improvements therefore represents only a small fraction of the broader supply gap.

The same problem appears with losses. National planning documents still use a baseline close to 58% and envision cutting it to 27%. That kind of change requires extensive sectorization, metering, leak detection, replacement of old pipes and stronger control of unauthorized connections.

Santa Marta is finally spending effort on several parts of the system at once. The city simply has not reached the point where those projects change daily water security for everyone.

Will Santa Marta’s desalination plant finally solve the water crisis?

The desalination plant could remove a large part of Santa Marta’s supply shortage, but residents should not count it as solved water until the plant is built, connected and operating.

The planned scale is large enough to matter. Government and Superservicios documents describe a main desalination plant of roughly 500 liters per second. Authorities estimate that Santa Marta needs at least 600 additional liters per second over the coming years.

Put those two numbers together and the importance becomes obvious. A fully functioning 500-liter-per-second plant could theoretically cover more than 80% of the additional supply identified in that estimate.

The project has also moved beyond the announcement stage. The Ministry of Housing recently opened the public selection process for the design, construction and commissioning of the facility.

That is meaningful progress, but procurement still leaves design, construction, testing and network integration ahead. As of now, the main desalination plant is adding zero liters per second to household supply.

There is another catch. New production will work much better if Santa Marta also repairs the network. A system starting from losses near 58% can burn through a surprising share of additional capacity before residents feel the full benefit.

Project or measure	Approximate scale/status	What residents get today
Main desalination plant	~500 L/s planned; procurement launched	No operating supply yet
Taganga desalination project	~150 L/s proposed in recent government plans	Future local capacity
Irotama pump upgrade	Distribution increased by ~38 L/s	Already operating
Well rehabilitation	Multiple interventions	Incremental support
Network loss reduction	Target from ~58% to 27%	Still largely unfinished

Did almost five years of government intervention actually fix ESSMAR?

Partly. ESSMAR is in better shape than when the national government took control, but Santa Marta still has a water crisis after almost five years of intervention.

Superservicios intervened ESSMAR in 2021 after finding serious technical, financial and service problems. Average continuity was poor, losses were around 60%, water-quality indicators had problems and the utility itself was in a fragile financial position.

The intervention has now ended. Superservicios returned ESSMAR to Santa Marta’s municipal administration after concluding that the District’s rescue plan was technically, financially and legally viable.

That is a real institutional improvement. Water quality has also moved into the official low-risk range, average continuity appears better and several infrastructure projects advanced during the intervention.

But look at the timing of the handover. ESSMAR returned to local control while the city was again dealing with a dry-season emergency, falling river flows and alternative water distribution. Superservicios also kept the company under special supervision for another six months.

So the intervention helped stabilize ESSMAR as a company. It did not deliver enough new water infrastructure to end Santa Marta’s recurring shortages.

Could fixing Santa Marta’s leaks help almost as much as finding another water source?

Potentially, yes. Cutting Santa Marta’s water losses could recover a huge amount of value from water the city already produces, although we cannot treat the entire 58% loss figure as physical leakage.

The planned reduction from roughly 58% non-revenue water to 27% equals 31 percentage points of system input. Even without knowing the exact current production volume on every day, the scale is enormous.

Some of that 58% comes from actual leaks. Recovering those liters directly improves physical supply. Another part comes from illegal connections, faulty meters and water that reaches users without generating proper billing. Fixing those losses mainly improves ESSMAR’s finances, which still matters because a financially healthier utility can maintain and expand the system more effectively.

Recent events show both sides. ESSMAR has repaired leaks on the Manzanares system, while illegal interference has previously removed hundreds of liters per second from major intakes.

The best outcome would therefore combine new supply and lower losses. Desalination gives Santa Marta another dependable source; network repairs make sure more of that expensive water reaches paying users.

Is climate change making Santa Marta’s water problem harder for good?

Probably yes. Santa Marta’s water system is becoming riskier to operate because it depends heavily on sources that respond quickly to heat, rainfall and drought.

Research and climate-resilience projects around the Sierra Nevada have long warned that higher temperatures and changing rainfall could reduce dependable water availability around Santa Marta. The precise long-term decline varies between models, so we should avoid pretending there is one certain percentage.

What we can observe already is the vulnerability those models describe. River flows have fallen dramatically in previous droughts. These days, flows into Mamatoco and El Roble have declined again. IDEAM has simultaneously recorded unusually high temperatures in the Caribbean region and now expects the current El Niño to persist and possibly become very strong.

Heavy rain brings a different problem. Intense precipitation can drive turbidity high enough to interrupt treatment. Santa Marta therefore has to manage both ends of the climate problem: too little river water during dry periods and difficult-to-treat river water during extreme rainfall.

The city’s long-term projects increasingly reflect that reality. Desalination, groundwater management, lower leakage and a more redundant distribution network all reduce dependence on exactly how much rain falls over the Sierra Nevada in a particular season.

Is Santa Marta closer to fixing its water problem than five years ago?

Yes. Santa Marta is much closer to a credible long-term solution than it was five years ago, even though residents still live with a system that can fail badly today.

Five years ago, ESSMAR was entering national intervention with continuity around 17 hours a day on average, losses close to 60% and no near-term solution capable of fundamentally changing the supply balance.

Now several pieces are further along. Average continuity appears higher. Water quality has improved. The main desalination plant has entered a formal selection process. Pumping upgrades are operating. Well rehabilitation and network work continue. A much larger public-private infrastructure plan targets 24-hour continuity, full water coverage and losses of 27%.

The ambition of that broader plan is huge. National infrastructure documents estimate around COP 6.14 trillion of investment for the long-term acueducto and sewer overhaul, with water coverage intended to rise from around 83% to 100%.

But there is still a wide gap between planned infrastructure and delivered water. Most of the transformative capacity has not reached the network yet.

Santa Marta is closer to solving the crisis on paper and in procurement. Residents will know the situation has really changed when a strong dry season no longer pushes large parts of the city back toward tankers, low pressure and rotating shortages.

Structural issue	Current/planning baseline	Long-term objective	Progress so far
Water coverage	~83%	100%	Large gap remains
Average continuity	~20.5 h/day	24 h/day	Meaningful improvement
Water losses	~58%	27%	Still far from target
Additional supply	At least ~600 L/s estimated need	Diversified new supply	Main project not operating
Utility governance	ESSMAR intervention ended	Stable local operation	Improved, still supervised

So, is Santa Marta’s water problem getting worse?

Yes, Santa Marta’s water problem is getting worse in the sense that matters most right now: the city’s already-tight supply is facing stronger pressure before its major new infrastructure is ready.

River inflows into the main treatment plants have recently fallen. El Niño is strengthening. ESSMAR is still using alternative distribution across many neighborhoods. A single damaged pipe or blocked intake can remove water from tens of thousands of users because the system has little spare capacity.

At the same time, Santa Marta has improved some things. Average continuity is higher than around the 2021 intervention, official water-quality indicators are better and ESSMAR has returned to local control. Those gains are real, and ignoring them would exaggerate the decline.

They just have not changed the central water equation enough.

The strongest number remains the gap between what Santa Marta has and what it needs. Authorities estimate at least 600 additional liters per second will be required, while the planned 500-liter-per-second desalination plant is still moving through procurement rather than supplying households. Network losses, meanwhile, remain around the high-50% range in the city’s infrastructure planning baseline.

So the sharper answer is not that Santa Marta is simply “running out of water.” The city has made operational progress while its overall water security has become more exposed. Today’s stronger drought conditions are arriving faster than the new supply, lower losses and redundancy needed to handle them.

Until that balance changes, another severe dry season will keep producing the same familiar result: less water in the rivers, more pressure on a fragile network and too many neighborhoods depending on emergency distribution.

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