Water In, Water Out
Early 2023 witnessed OOMSAPAS, our water utility have a multi-day outage and another government agency fix a long-standing problem with our sewer system. Let's look at both episodes:
Fresh Water
Owing to the rapid growth in Los Cabos, the water supplies are chronically stressed and frequently rationed.
We use water to a) replace evaporation from the pools, b) irrigate our landscape and c) supply potable water to the 106 Units. Every day, our Community Management staff monitors the supply arriving from OOMSAPAS and makes adjustments to ensure that the Units have priority access. How? By shutting off water to pools and irrigation when supplies are low, and moving water between the cisterns at each Phase to make sure everyone has water.
Bottom line: the staff spends time every day manually ensuring adequate fresh water is available for our Units.
On Friday, February 9, 2023, the staff noticed that OOMSAPAS was not supplying any water. Upon inquiry, the Community Manager learned that one of the large pumps supplying Las Mañanitas and neighboring properties had failed.
The staff immediately shut off water to pools and irrigation and notified Owners about the issue. Bracing for an extended outage, we arranged for a private water service to deliver a truckload of water to us, which they did early the next week.
The pool waters got so low at one point that the skimmers and filters would not work correctly. A contingency plan was prepared a) to manually treat the water while possible, and b) eventually close the pool when the manual treatments were not sufficient.
Happily, service was restored mid-week, with OOMSAPAS resuming normal water deliveries. So, after the cisterns were filled, irrigation and pools resumed normal operation.
Sewage
During the past few months, you may have noticed a puddle sometimes forming on the Malecón near the entrance to Las Mañanitas. You may have thought that this was irrigation run-off. But, upon closer inspection, your NOSE would have told you otherwise: It was "grey water" -- a euphemism for sewer water without solid materials in it.
The problem was that the connection from Las Mañanitas' internal sewer system to the Sewer Main that runs down the Malecón was clogged. When wastewater volume increases, as it does every Winter, the "grey water" would back up and form puddles on the surface.
This should have been an easy problem to fix -- just call the City or the utility responsible, right? Well, not so fast! It turns out that FONATUR, the Federal agency responsible for tourism development, built the main sewer system for all Hotel Zone properties and connected it to the system coming from the West and, on the east side, to the OOMSAPAS system near the Estuary (where the sewage treatment plant is located).
So, who do you call? No, not Ghostbusters. David called OOMSAPAS, who said FONATUR was responsible. FONATUR initially pointed the finger to the private party who built the sewer coming in from the West, believing that we actually connected with the last part of their system. That party said, "No, it's OOMSAPAS' issue." OOMSAPAS directed us back to FONATUR ... well, you understand why it took several weeks to sort out.
David finally got all parties in a room and FONATUR took responsibility. The bad news is that it took them a long time to agree. The good news is that they started work without much further delay.
