While breakdowns and blackouts disrupt pumping, a 1,000-liter tank delivered to your home can cost up to 15,000 pesos.
14ymedio, Juan Diego Rodríguez, Havana, September 9, 2026 – There has been a great deal of activity since early morning on Nueva del Pilar Street, in Havana’s Cerro municipality. There, at giant dispensers, tanks are being filled that are now the capital’s main source of water supply. Whether by water trucks or electric tricycles, a service is being provided that blackouts and breakdowns have prevented from being delivered normally through the pipes for months.
This method is not cheap. A 1,000-liter tank delivered to a home costs between 10,000 and 15,000 pesos, and a 250-liter one costs between 2,500 and 3,000. If the water has to be pumped up to an elevated tank, the modern-day water carriers connect a motor and charge another 5,000 pesos.
At the Cerro water-supply point, however, private individuals can fill up for free, with the only requirement being to get a turn. “The enormous line that sometimes forms,” says Marilyn, a resident of Luyanó, who has gone several times knowing that this way she does not have to pay anything. “It’s outrageous that they want to charge that just for sending the water to people’s homes.”
The mother of two teenagers says that in her neighborhood the situation is unsustainable because of the irregularity of the water pumping. “Before, you knew which day the water was scheduled, but now anything can happen, from them not turning it on the day it is supposed to come to going several days without receiving a drop.”
When it arrives, she says, the area “turns into a swarm of bottles and buckets going back and forth, because it comes with little pressure and not everyone gets any, only those who are in a lower position.” The latter, being luckier, help those who have none, to such an extent that their homes fill up with people carrying containers of every size. “The shortage is so severe that there are people who have already adapted to bathing with just one bottle of water,” Marilyn laments. “My aunts, for example, have gone to live together to help each other, and they wash themselves with the water that drips from the air conditioner.”
This is not a scene exclusive to Luyanó. On the streets of Havana, it is now a common sight to see people carrying buckets filled to the brim with both hands.
The water crisis, the severity of which the authorities acknowledged months ago, now frequently occupies the pages of the official press. This Tuesday, reported Cubadebate, Miguel Díaz-Canel himself “followed up” on the issue, visiting El Gato, the capital’s main water source, in Mayabeque. The system, with 17 wells, supplies almost 30% of the city, specifically the municipalities of Regla, Guanabacoa, San Miguel del Padrón, Habana del Este, Cotorro, and Diez de Octubre.
In his usual voluntaristic prose, the president, accompanied by half a dozen senior officials – including the Minister of the Armed Forces, Álvaro López Miera, the Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, and Deputy Prime Minister Inés María Chapman – assured that there is an “investment and maintenance program” that includes the “elimination of leaks in the well field and pipelines,” the “completion of pumping equipment,” and “actions to guarantee electrical stability.”
In a first stage, the official website reports, “we are trying to coordinate the electrical supply, so that we can provide generators to prevent a blackout from causing an interruption in the service, and at the same time we are working on the sites to move toward the definitive stage, which is with renewable sources.”
Referring to the economic measures announced last June, he said that “many possibilities are opening up as a result of the transformations that the country has proposed in economic and social matters,” but then objected: “That truth will not bear fruit on its own.” For this to happen, he explained – assigning responsibility to private individuals – “it depends, among other premises, on the boldness and creativity of those who are in charge of some undertaking.”
Taking advantage of the trip to Mayabeque, he also visited the Boris Luis Santa Coloma sugar mill, in Madruga, without mentioning that, like all the sugar mills on the Island, it is shut down. In San José de las Lajas, he went to the Amistad Cubano Vietnamita Basic Business Unit (UEB), dedicated to the genetic improvement of chickens.
At this last stop, there was also no shortage of praise for renewables, which are insufficient to offset the unprecedented fuel crisis: “Solar panels have also been installed there, because energy autonomy is one of the great battles of those who seek, right now, to move forward in any worthwhile undertaking.”
Referring to the economic measures announced last June, he said that “many possibilities are opening up as a result of the transformations that the country has proposed in economic and social matters,” but then objected: “That truth will not bear fruit on its own.” For this to happen, he explained – assigning responsibility to private individuals – “it depends, among other premises, on the boldness and creativity of those who are in charge of some undertaking.”
Taking advantage of the trip to Mayabeque, he also visited the Boris Luis Santa Coloma sugar mill, in Madruga, without mentioning that, like all the sugar mills on the Island, it is shut down. In San José de las Lajas, he went to the Amistad Cubano Vietnamita Basic Business Unit (UEB), dedicated to the genetic improvement of chickens.
At this last stop, there was also no shortage of praise for renewables, which are insufficient to offset the unprecedented fuel crisis: “Solar panels have also been installed there, because energy autonomy is one of the great battles of those who seek, right now, to move forward in any worthwhile undertaking.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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