Why is there no freaking water?!

Sometimes living in Gib you get an insight of what it is like to live in a third world country, albeit a third world country with more billionairesw walking down the street than anywhere else...

Let's discuss the water supply shall we....
In Gibraltar in order to be able to flush sewage right into the sea we flush our toilettes with salt water... You do the destruction math on that.

So there is a difference between drinking water and toilette water, this is a very common post in the 'recent news section' on the AquaGib website (lyonnaise.gi)

In order to enable AquaGib Ltd to carry out planned works on the POTABLE water distribution network the supply of POTABLE water to the following areas will be cut off on Wednesday 11 July 2007 from 11.00 pm to 6.00 am.

In order to enable AquaGib Ltd to carry out planned works on the POTABLE water distribution network the supply of POTABLE water to the following areas will be cut off on Thursday 12 July 2007 from 9.00 am to 12.00 pm.

Why do it during the day you might ask? I am fairly certain that the imagined phone conversation I depicted yesterday will apply here too.

I do accept that maintenance work has to be carried out from time to time, and at least they give you some sort of warning. However messages like this frankly scare me, especially since I was feeling rather ill after drinking water...

We have been informed by Aqua Gib that they have had to add extra chlorine to the drinking water in Gibraltar due to a virus breaking out in the north district.

Being from Sweden I am exceptionally spoiled with clean fresh water, we bottle tap water and sell it to the English! To me drinking water that tastes or smells of chlorine is wrong. If that much chlorine is needed surely the water isn't clean enough from the start, and in this case CLEARLY not.

Is fresh drinkable water too much to ask for? I understand the water shortage and poor quality of water in Spain. The region is dry and exceptionally poor. Gibraltar might me dry but it is certainly not poor. And it's certainly not over populated either. So why oh WHY does it sometimes seem like you live in a third world country? Summer hours? Probably....