Montevideo hit by floods as critics bemoan lack of investment

Uruguayan capital Montevideo is still reeling from the effects of heavy rains that left parts of the city under water at the weekend.

The floods prompted criticism of the lack of investment in flood defense infrastructure and authorities’ management of the situation, with mayor Carolina Cossé, a precandidate for next year’s presidential election, coming under fire.  

Some areas were reported as receiving up to 118mm of rain in less than eight hours, the city government stated in a release.

Cossé said that the city’s storm drains do not have the capacity to deal with such large volumes of water in short periods of time, as she attributed the intense precipitation to climate change. 

She added that her administration has lined up two flood control projects involving investments of US$43mn, but they require the approval of the national government and Montevideo’s departmental council to access financing from multilateral agencies such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Latin American development bank CAF.

Cosse's response prompted criticism from the ruling Nacional party. 

A member of the departmental council, Diego Rodríguez, claimed that Cossé was lying about the investment plans for flood control and repeating excuses made for previous floods.

“City hall collects US$2mn [in taxes] per day and if there are no works, clearly we're going to suffer this again,” Rodríguez told Radio Monte Carlo.

Secretary of the presidency and Nacional party presidential hopeful Álvaro Delgado also criticized Cossé’s response, as well as that of her Frente Amplio party, which has controlled the city government for 35 years.

“During that time there were works that weren’t done for a long time,” he said during a press conference. 

Cossé officially launched her presidential bid last month, although she will have to win the Frente Amplio primary first, which will be held on June 30 alongside those of other parties. 

A poll released last month by Equipos Consultores showed the Montevideo mayor on just 20%, trailing her Canelones department counterpart Yasmandú Orsi by 18 percentage points.

Delgado is also expected to win the Nacional party primary by a comfortable margin, as surveys put him on 28%, 14 points ahead of the party’s Montevideo head Laura Raffo.

Frente Amplio is seen to be well ahead of the incumbent Nacional party and their coalition partners, as President Luis Lacalle Pou's administration has been hit by crime problems, corruption scandals and its handling of a drought that left Montevideo close to being without water earlier this year.