Daily Water Watch: La Plata at 44.56 m

Day 49 of the metro rotation plan — interruptions paused since September 2, AAA has not canceled the plan. This morning’s 5:00 chart from the Autoridad de Acueductos y Alcantarillados shows Carraízo flat at 40.68 meters, and La Plata at 44.56 meters — down 7 centimeters from yesterday.

This is the 44th entry in our daily chart check (yesterday’s is here), built the same way every morning — from AAA’s own numbers, read off its charts for our reservoir board.

Carraízo: holding

Carraízo held its level. This morning’s chart puts it flat at 40.68 meters, in the seguridad band. The next line on the chart — into the observación band — sits at 39.70 meters, 0.98 meters below this morning’s reading.

La Plata: down 7 cm

La Plata kept sliding. This morning’s chart puts it at 44.56 meters — down 7 centimeters from yesterday, in the ajustes band. The next line on the chart — into the control band — sits at 40.50 meters, 4.06 meters below this morning’s reading. At AAA’s printed pace that is roughly 58 days out (straight-line date: Nov 22 — a projection, not a forecast; one wet afternoon moves it).

If your water comes from La Plata — Dorado, Guaynabo, Naranjito, Toa Alta, Toa Baja, Vega Alta, Bayamón, Cataño, Corozal — this is the reservoir to watch; AAA lists 130,828 client accounts on it.

What the numbers say

Carraízo has swung from a strong weekly rise to a mild daily slide, falling 2 cm a day this week versus 24.2 cm a day the week before — a sharp reversal in direction. Rain barely factored in, with just 0.08 in recorded at nearby gauges, most of it on September 23. If the current pace holds, the arithmetic points to the observación line in about 49 days, around November 13, though that’s a projection from this week’s rate, not a forecast of what’s coming. The other two reservoirs are holding closer to steady: both are essentially flat, with net movement this week sitting inside normal chart-reading noise rather than signaling any real shift.

La Plata’s picture is mixed — its weekly average looks flat, but it has posted three straight lower mornings for a cumulative 16 cm drop, showing a bit more downward persistence day-to-day than the average alone suggests. Cidra, meanwhile, saw the most rain of the three, with 0.59 in at nearby gauges this week and 0.3 in of that falling on September 23, yet its level barely moved. Neither reservoir shows the kind of acceleration seen at Carraízo, and both remain comfortably away from their respective lower band lines for now.

What to watch

• Río Grande, Canóvanas and Loíza: whether AAA says in public that the east-side rationing is over, and posts that the Canóvanas filtration plant is back in operation.

The other rationing reservoir

Numbers from AAA’s Monitoreo Diario chart of Sep 25, read each morning for our reservoir board — where the levels, the bands, and the live rain gauges update daily. Rain figures are USGS gauges within 12 km of each reservoir (a proximity proxy, not a basin measurement). Day counts start Aug 8, when the metro rotation took effect. Straight-line dates are arithmetic, not forecasts. The analysis paragraphs are drafted by Claude from the computed figures and checked number-by-number against them before publishing.