Papallacta is three things at once: a hot-springs town two hours east of Quito, a lake with a crude-oil pipeline along its shore, and the name of the water system that serves more of the capital than any other (about 45 percent of people by the utility's 2025 count, 50 percent in other reporting), carried over the continental divide from the Amazon side. If you searched it for the thermal pools, this is not that post. This is the one about what Papallacta water is, and about the morning of 9 July 2025, when the south of the city learned it was not on it.
That morning the taps in Quitumbe opened on nothing. On the flank of Antisana, a saturated hillside had let go — about 650,000 cubic meters of ground onto the conduit that carries La Mica reservoir water down to the El Troje plant — and taken 350 meters of pipe with it. The next day the city declared an emergency in six parishes: Guamaní, La Ecuatoriana, Chillogallo, Quitumbe, La Argelia, Turubamba. About 400,000 people. Roughly fourteen days.
The rest of the city kept its water. Not out of privilege — out of plumbing. Quito drinks from four supply systems that are not connected to each other; when one fails, no valve sends the other three to help. Papallacta, the biggest of the four, did not fail that month. It has failed before, a different way. This post holds both.
fourteen days in the south
July had delivered 91 percent of its normal month of rain in its first days. The slope above the conduit was heavy. When it moved, it moved onto the only line that feeds those six parishes.
What followed is what a city does when a pipe becomes a fleet. EPMAPS, the metropolitan utility, grew its tanker count from 17 trucks to 97. Hospitals went first — the Nueva Aurora maternity hospital alone needs 130,000 liters a day. UNICEF and Fundación Favorita moved in behind the utility. Crews replaced 365 meters of pipe on a hillside that had just proven it could move, and the south came back on line on 28–29 July. Trucks are what redundancy looks like when it was never built — the same move Santa Fe, New Mexico made in 2024, hauling 1.4 million gallons to a neighbor whose plant had failed (the fire that can reach santa fe).
Hold the frame steady. This was not a Quito outage. It was a Quito Sur outage. The other three systems ran the whole time, and that is the lesson. Four separate systems meant the failure stopped at the south, and it meant the south had nowhere to turn. The pipe was rebuilt in three weeks. The fourteen days were not.
four systems, no valve between them
If you pay an EPMAPS bill, you are on one of these. Most people do not know which until it stops. What Quito depends on walks each system; this table asks one question of each — what takes it out, and what backs it up.
| system | share of people served | what can take it out | backup from the other three |
|---|---|---|---|
| Papallacta Integrado | ~45% (EPMAPS via Primicias, 2025; 50% in Expreso; a 2022 split gave the Bellavista line 30%) | Oil spill beside Laguna de Papallacta (2003); grazing on the páramo; intakes outside the district, in Napo | none |
| Pita–Puengasí | ~27% | Drought — no reservoir, ~40.8 km of open canal, rationing up to 12 hours in 2024; Cotopaxi lahars | none |
| La Mica–Quito Sur | ~16–17% | One conduit (9 July 2025) | none |
| Conducciones Occidentales | ~10% | Urban-edge fire; the city climbing the slopes | none |
The shares come from different years and denominators — read them as shape, not arithmetic. About 85 percent of the city's water starts in páramo by the utility's count, closer to 90 by the water fund's. It reaches you through one of four separate pipes, and the pipe is the thing that can break on a Wednesday.
what papallacta water is
Papallacta water is the supply of Quito's largest system, serving about 45 percent of the city's people by EPMAPS's 2025 count (50 percent in Expreso's reporting). It is collected on the Amazon side of the continental divide — in the Papallacta, Chalpi and Oyacachi-side páramos of Cayambe-Coca National Park, in Napo province, outside the metropolitan district — stored in the Salve Faccha (10.5 million m³ useful), Mogotes and Sucus reservoirs, and carried west over the cordillera to the Bellavista and Paluguillo plants. It serves the north and east of the city, including Pifo and Tababela, where the airport is.
Read that again from the south. Guamaní was dry for two weeks because its mountain is Antisana and its pipe was one. Calderón and Tumbaco kept their water because their mountain is on the far side of the Andes and their pipe was a different one. Quito drinks from both slopes of a continent and cannot pass a glass between them.
The Amazon side is also where the money has gone. The first phase of Chalpi Grande — new capture on the Chalpi and Encantado rivers, about 2,200 liters a second — was delivered in March 2021 on a $39.3 million credit from the French development agency AFD, with a 7.66 MW hydro plant that helps power the Metro de Quito. The Agua para Calderón line, reported at $124 million in early 2025 and $130 million a year later, will carry the same water toward roughly 500,000 residents of Calderón, Tumbaco and Pifo. Above all of it, part of the páramo that fills Salve Faccha sits on land titled to the Kichwa Comuna Oyacachi — about 62,000 hectares — and the city has paid the comuna for that water under an agreement running from 2001 to 2049. Quito already pays its upstream neighbor. Nothing here asks more of them.
So Papallacta is the well-funded system. It did not break in July. It has failed before, in a way no landslide crew can fix.
the other way a pipe fails
On 8 April 2003 the SOTE — the trans-Ecuadorian crude pipeline — ruptured beside Laguna de Papallacta. Crude covered about half the lake's surface. The utility closed the intake valves. Arsenic in the lake was later measured at three times the norm. How much oil went in depends on who you ask: at least 13,000 barrels by a Petroecuador engineer's count, 22,000 in the company's own reports, and about double the official figures by the estimate of environmental groups, Acción Ecológica among them. This post will not pick one.
The SOTE and the OCP pipeline still run beside that lake. The national oil economy crosses the capital's biggest water source on its way to the coast.
La Mica's failure was gravity: wet ground, one conduit, a slope with no margin. Papallacta's failure was chemistry: a steel line full of crude on the shore of the lake the intake draws from. One is a two-week problem you can truck around. The other is a valve you close and hope. Both have happened. Both are this city's, and fixing one does nothing for the other.
The cousin of this post is about fire: they don't care about wildfires — they care about the one that can reach the house. The water version is the same shape: the thing that can reach you is the pipe you are on, not "Andean water security."
both directions
Everything above is what the city depends on. Now the other direction. Depending on those two mountains, in turn: 400,000 people in six parishes and their hospitals; 500,000 more in Calderón, Tumbaco and Pifo; the airport at Tababela, which drinks from the Paluguillo plant; the Metro, which runs partly on Chalpi's turbines; and the French, Inter-American and Spanish lenders whose pipes are worth exactly what the páramo above them keeps sending. The slope and the sponge are not on their balance sheet. They are under it. The full people map is who drinks Quito's water.
what already holds
EPMAPS did the hard thing well: 97 trucks in two weeks, hospitals first, 365 meters of pipe rebuilt on a live slope, the south back on line by month's end. El Troje is being expanded by 1,000 liters a second; the 2026 investment portfolio is above $90 million. And there is a fund on every water bill that has paid for the páramo itself since 2000 — that is the next post.
What does not yet hold is the slope under the steel. Above it, the sponge already has a keeper: FONAG, the fund on that bill, manages the Antisana páramo that fills La Mica and keeps cattle off it. Grass and cushion bog in good condition hold rain and release it slowly; that is what keeps the reservoir filling between storms, and it is a supply benefit, not a slope anchor. Whether anything growing could have held a 650,000 m³ hillside is an engineering question for the crews who just rebuilt it, and this post will not answer it for them. What belongs in the risk plan is both: the condition of the páramo that fills the pipe, and the ground the pipe crosses. A páramo is not water is the long version.
name the pipe. name the person. one step
A general "protect Quito's water" ask is a guilt trip. The specific version has one pipe, one person who already looks at it, and one thing to do.
| who you are | what you already look at | one step |
|---|---|---|
| EPMAPS, or one of the utility's lenders | The La Mica conduit slope; the Pita canal; the shore where the SOTE runs | Put the páramo that fills the pipe and the slope it crosses in the same risk plan as the steel. Solutions for utilities, then tell us which line. |
| The emergency committee, a south parish council, or the Secretaría de Ambiente | Six parishes on one pipe; a tanker plan that started at 17 trucks | Put slope cover and páramo condition into the risk plan, not only the response plan. Solutions for governments. |
| Someone whose tap went dry in Quitumbe or Guamaní | The mountain to the southeast on a clear morning — that is Antisana, and that is your water | If the taps go dry again, watch EPMAPS and the city's emergency committee (COE-M) for tanker points and restoration times — the July 2025 emergency declaration ran on Quito Informa. Then know your system: who drinks Quito's water. |
Where we fit, plainly. Ensurance funds a named living system up front, before it fails, through a certificate on an agent for that place. It does not own the pipe, and it does not replace the utility or the fund already on the bill. There is no Quito certificate today. The nearest live agent is the biome both slopes share — northern-andean-paramo.ecoregion — and volumes there are still small. The honest doors are the ones in the table.
frequently asked questions
what is papallacta water?
Quito's largest supply — about 45 percent of people served in 2025, 50 percent by other counts — collected from Amazon-side páramos in Cayambe-Coca National Park, Napo province, stored at Salve Faccha, Mogotes and Sucus, and carried over the continental divide to the Bellavista and Paluguillo plants for the north and east of the city, including the airport.
why did south quito go without water in 2025?
Only the south did. A 650,000 m³ landslide on 9 July 2025 destroyed 350 meters of the only pipe from La Mica reservoir to the El Troje plant. With no interconnection to the other three systems, about 400,000 people in six southern parishes went roughly fourteen days without piped water, until full restoration on 28–29 July.
are quito's water systems connected?
No. Papallacta Integrado, Pita–Puengasí, La Mica–Quito Sur and the Occidentales lines each serve their own part of the city and cannot back each other up. That is why July 2025 hit the south alone.
next steps
- Run the water, or lend to it? The slope is under your asset. Solutions for utilities →
- Sit on the emergency committee or a parish council? Start a conversation →
- Want the fire version of this argument? They don't care about wildfires →