Petorca water crisis

[1] By 2018 the Ministry of Public Works had decreed Petorca a "zone of water scarcity" for fourteen years in a row.

[2] The drought has mainly affected the lowlands and foothills while many surrounding hills maintain a healthy cover of avocado plantations.

[3] Lorena Donaire of the environmental organisation Modatima recalls 1985 as the first year Petorca River dried.

[3] The military dictatorship's agrarian counter-reform in the 1970s and 1980s and the Constitution of Chile of 1980 have been blamed for an increased concentration in the ownership of land around Petorca.

[4] According to Lorena Donaire the situation is aggravated by the establishment of pools of water by large landowners across the basin.