Puerto Rico is in the middle of a severe drought, which has led the government to begin officially rationing water. July was the driest in the Island’s history, and last week, the water authority announced planned shutoffs in certain areas for 48 hours on a rotating schedule. But residents say they have been experiencing water disruption and intermittent outages for months, in part due to leaky pipes and other infrastructure maintenance problems. Chef Maria Mercedes Grubb, co-owner of a restaurant in San Juan called SatoFino, spoke with “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal about what the ongoing crisis means for her business.Kai Ryssdal: How do you run a business, not just any business, but a restaurant, when you don't have dependable water? What's that like for you?Maria Mercedes Grubb: It's always just constant uncertainty. You don't know what to expect. There's supposed to be a calendar that tells you when you're going to have water. Ever since they announced it officially, everybody is just on edge, trying to see whether we can open or not based on the availability of water.Ryssdal: Do you set up a schedule so that your sous chef and your dishwashers go in early and see if you have water? I mean, how does that work?Mercedes Grubb: Well, basically, we always have a prep person that comes in, so that person is always scheduled to come in regardless. And then they send the texts like whether we have water or not, and then we know how to align our shopping, our deliveries, our announcement with social media to let customers know. It's not just my staff; it's also my distributors and providers that I have to worry about.Ryssdal: Yeah, and I'm sure they are in some water problems themselves. But if you don't have water at your restaurant that day? Do you just shut it down? Right, you can't open up.Mercedes Grubb: Me at SatoFino, we choose not to. I do know of a lot of colleagues that choose to open and just put a sign saying “bathrooms closed,” for example, and people just choose.Ryssdal: So, how much is this costing you? It's got to be adding up by now.Mercedes Grubb: It's definitely adding up. I mean, it's the slowest season of the year. Summer is always terrible, so this is terrible timing. So there's definitely been a decrease of about at least 30% in sales since this started happening, which is already terrible for our very, very razor-thin gross margin.Ryssdal: Yeah, restaurants are tough businesses in the best of times. So, if this is not the high tourist season, then who are your customers, and are you doing any real business at all?Mercedes Grubb: Business is definitely very slim. My customers are [mostly] locals, but right now a lot of people are holding back. People are tired. They don't even have water to get ready and go out. And the morale in my team and my staff has been very very low. So it's just the air is definitely thick and hot right now in Puerto Rico.Ryssdal: Yeah, how many people do you have working for you?Mercedes Grubb: We have 18 beautiful people that work for us.Ryssdal: So that's a lot of people to have to put out of work for a day or two or three.Mercedes Grubb: It's a lot of people. I have to do cuts, even when we do open. I have to cut staff, and at the end of the day, you stop paying yourself so you can pay your staff. It's not something that's definitely, that you can rely on on a general basis, or forever. It's not sustainable.Ryssdal: This is going to sound like a ridiculous thing to say, but you sound very, very tired.Mercedes Grubb: I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted, and this is like the fifth pivot. We talked before, and we talked to you about the hurricane and after the hurricane and here we are again. Before it was power, now it's water. Sometimes it's both, still.Ryssdal: Well, since you brought it up, you were there for Hurricane Maria, you went through COVID. This now seems like a triple whammy, and you know you've got some options. And I understand leaving home is really hard, but if you can't make a living and you can't take care of yourself and your family and your employees, there's a case to be made that maybe it's time?Mercedes Grubb: A lot of Puerto Ricans are feeling that way. A lot of people are tired of being resilient. We're known for that, but it just gets exhausting. I mean, I have a severely autistic son. I can't bathe him with no water. I can't, like, take care of his basic needs when we have this situation. But there's still a little bit of fire of like, just trying to hold on to our land, because I mean I do own property here. I have my own home that I saved many, many years to get there, and I'm finally here. And now I feel like I'm being pushed by the island, by the situation.Ryssdal: When this immediate crisis is over, and there's water in the reservoirs, and you can turn on the tap and fill your pots and your pans in the restaurant. What's that first night going to be like?Mercedes Grubb: I mean, there was a little rain this week, so people were very excited. So I'm hoping that we get that excitement once we go back to normalcy. Though it doesn't feel like it's going to happen anytime soon.