translated from Spanish: Minister Walker: “We are facing the biggest drought in history”

Minister Walker: “We are facing the biggest drought in history”5 October 2019 11:01Agriculture Minister Antonio Walker reiterated that Chile is facing the largest drought in its history, after yesterday the government decreed an area water shortages in the O’Higgins Region. Walker in conversation with Radio Cooperative stated that “every week new communes are being incorporated, because the truth is that we are facing the biggest drought in history.” The Secretary of State stated that 116 communes in six regions of the country have so far been declared an agricultural emergency. Walker referred to what happens this 2019 compared to 1968, explaining that “what is this year’s characteristic? That in the last 15 have been decreasing rainfall, and we have this year that it is very dry. The year 68, the previous 15 years were relatively normal.” The holder of the agro has assured the station that “many villorrios, goats, small towns far from the big cities are having a hard time, because many of them no longer have drinking water, and we are attending them with cistern trucks. There are 400 thousand families in Chile who do not have clean water.” In the same vein, he stated that “about 500 thousand goat heads have no fodder or water” and that “we have to water 1.2 million hectares in Chile, we have fresh and dried fruit, many minor fruit, crops, vegetables, vines, and that adds up”. Minister Walker addressed the National Bureau for Water Shortage, which will be headed by President Sebastián Piñera, stating that this will discuss “the structural issue of water, as a state issue, as a country issue, and not looked at in a political color”.

Original source in Spanish