Water Day: In the Antofagasta desert, Chileans drink seawater In northern Chile, many residents of the region of Antofagasta don’t have access to running water or suffer from cuts, depending on tankers to distribute the vital liquid to particular houses and farming plots. The water was formerly supplied from rivers that turned out to have very high levels of arsenic, so the city is now desalinizing seawater for 80 percent of its consumption, which some say could be unsafe.