On the one hand an acute shortage and on the other a glut of unwanted water that has to be carried away and discarded.
Water supply is cut off in every district of the city for hours on some days and all day on others.
Furthermore, no piped water reaches the crowded outskirts. Even the Water Ministry is not exempt. Each day the mass media announce the names of districts, even specific hospitals and schools, that are to receive piped water for that day. Until the early 1960s Caracas, which lies in a shallow valley some 1000 metres above sea level, received domestic water supplies from shallow groundwater. In the 1950s and 1960s rainfed reservoirs were built on nearby higher ground to supply the city's under one million people with treated water.