Debar does not have enough water. The public utility company "Standard" issued an appeal to residents to use water only for the most essential needs - no filling pools, no watering gardens, no hosing down yards and pavements.

The restrictions did not start yesterday. Since 1 July, the neighbourhoods Venec 1, Venec 2, Taranik and Kermanica first had four-hour cuts, then five-hour ones. Despite that, the problem is getting worse.

"In parts of the town there is no water for hours at a time, particularly on the upper floors of residential buildings," the utility says. In Dolno Kosovrasti, home to a spa complex, the restriction runs from 10 am to 1 pm every day.

The source is not the problem

And this is where the story gets interesting. Debar is not a town without water. The "Rosoki - Debar" water system is fed by springs in the village of Rosoki and the Mala Reka river, considered among the highest quality in Europe. The main reservoir supplies water for over 40,000 people.

The town has around 10,000 permanent residents, plus a few thousand more who arrive between late July and mid-August.

So: capacity for 40,000, consumers somewhere around 15,000 at peak load - and still no water on the third floor. That is not a water shortage. That is a system shortage.

The reasons they give themselves

The utility admits that the summer restrictions repeat every year, and lists the reasons as misuse of water, unpaid bills from a large number of consumers, and illegal connections.

Each of those three problems has a concrete fix that requires no new springs, only work: collect the bills, cut off the illegal connections, meter the flow. None of those fixes happens in August - they are winter work, when nobody complains because the water is running.

And so the appeal lands back on the resident. Let him save water, let him not water his garden, let him help. And of course he will help - because he has no other option. The question is whether, by next summer, somebody will open the list of illegal connections, or whether next August we will read this same text with the date changed.