MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — For at least 80 days, ever since drought and mismanagement sapped the drinking water supply of my country’s capital, the water that has come out of our taps has tasted terribly of salt and smelled awfully of chemicals. We cook pasta, wash lettuce and make coffee with it, buying more and more plastic water containers that wind up in the dump. Washing machines don’t foam, and the electric water heaters are failing from a buildup of sodium. At the height of the crisis, sodium and chloride levels rose to double and triple, respectively, the maximum values allowed by our own national drinking water regulations. And in 2004, we became the first country in the world to write access to safe drinking water into the Constitution.

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Persons: that’s Locations: MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Santa, Montevideo