ENVIRONMENT : With a Dry Determination, Puerto Rico Endures Drought : Dishwater quenches the flowers, and a bucketful cleans a car. The parched island gets by without declaring an emergency, but rationing gets tougher.

In homes all over the island, water is being saved in buckets, in sauce pans, in the bathtub. The dishwater goes on the flowers. Cars stay dirty.

And personal hygiene? “Well,” said businessman John Fucile, who lives in the Condado area, “on the days when I don’t have water, I ask a friend if I can shower at her place. It’s so embarrassing.”

With the island in the grip of a months-old drought, a tough new schedule of water rationing imposed last weekend means that some 2 million of the 3.6 million residents of this U.S. commonwealth now have no running water for up to 32 hours at a time.

Gov. Pedro Rossello so far has rejected the option of declaring an island-wide state of emergency and appealing for federal disaster aid, since rainfall on the western end of Puerto Rico is plentiful and water is being trucked into the populous San Juan area. And tourist hotels, most with rooftop cisterns that can be filled when the taps are running, have been largely unaffected.

But the most severe drought in almost 30 years--in combination with a leaky, neglected water storage and delivery system--has changed the daily routines for tens of thousands in San Juan, Ponce and Caguas.

Water trucks attract scores of people toting plastic containers. Some car washes and laundries have closed. Coffee growers have reported problems, and the dairy industry estimates milk production losses of $1.5 million.

Emilio M. Colon, director of the water and sewer authority, warned Monday that the sediment-choked reservoir serving the San Juan area held only a nine-day supply of water. Even with some rain falling Monday, Colon added, “it’s not over. Rationing will continue. It’s tougher now because you know that for one full day, you’re going to be without water. You can’t shower and you can’t wash clothes.”

Water rationing was imposed here in May after nine months of below-normal rainfall. Until Friday, water to most residences was shut off 16 hours every other day. Colon announced the tougher measures after Lake Carraizo dropped to a historic low.

Water to most homes is now off every other day from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. the next day, a period of 25 hours. But, Colon said, some may have to wait six or seven hours beyond that for the pipes to refill. “This is an inconvenience and an interruption to the economy,” he said. “But it is not a hurricane.”

Indeed, as the peak of hurricane season approaches, no one who went through Hugo in 1989 would wish for a storm to hit. But gentle tropical lows--like the one that passed by Monday, with lots of rain and little wind--are welcome.

God’s help has been solicited. In a letter to island parishes, Cardinal Luis Aponte Martinez wrote: “In view of the prolongation of the drought, I believe we ought to urge upon the faithful the necessity of prayers for God to send rain.”

Subnormal rainfall totals in the San Juan area began last August and September, according to forecaster Ron Block of the National Weather Service. “Basically, the island is 60% to 65% of normal,” he said.

The next rainy season does not begin until fall, and there are no guarantees. Normally, rainfall on the island, part of the Greater Antilles chain 1,000 miles east of Miami, varies widely--from an annual average of 150 inches in El Yunque rain forest to 30 inches in the arid southwest.

But a shortfall of rain is not the only problem. Even Colon cannot say how much water the system loses through leaking pipes, some of which were installed in the 1890s. “The figure of 45% lost has been reported,” said Colon, “but I think that is too high. But the outflow from the plants is not measured, so we just don’t know.”

In addition to a paucity of rain, leaking pipes and even theft of water, a lack of storage capacity has exacerbated the crisis. Lake Carraizo, for example, is so silt-clogged that half its original storage capacity is gone.

Dredging has begun. But wrangling over permits and equipment problems has slowed the effort to free some 20 days worth of water that is trapped behind a mountain of sediment and thus cannot be pumped from the lake to the filtering plant.

Meanwhile, the water authority also has begun to rehabilitate 17 wells and dig 12 new ones in the metropolitan area.

Colon, an engineer who is on loan from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was tapped by Rossello 16 months ago to revamp the water system.

“The drought, along with the storage and delivery problems, is my worst nightmare,” he said. “The system is stretched. But in general people have been understanding.”

The island’s tourism chief, Luis Fortuno, has vowed: “We will do everything we need to do to insulate visitors from this inconvenient situation.”

Nonetheless, tourists do notice. In Old San Juan, bathrooms in fast-food restaurants are closed because there is no water to flush toilets. Some restaurants serve meals on paper plates. On request, waiters bring bottled water, not tap water.

But residents and small businesses on this 3,400-square-mile island are hardest hit. Painting contractor Joanne Baker, for example, has seen business dry up, and she has laid off workers because her company is no longer using high-pressure water jets to remove old paint.

“I don’t know if there is a law against it, but I don’t see any other painters using water blasting,” she said. “During rationing, I just couldn’t do it.”

Colon said that there are no restrictions on the use of water when it is available. But, he added, peer pressure--in conjunction with rationing--has reduced water consumption in the San Juan area from 83 million gallons to less than 40 million gallons a day.

In the meantime, the dredging of Lake Carraizo is just one phase of a $2.4-billion plan to modernize a water delivery network made up of 220 separate water systems and 350 deep wells. Rossello has called the island’s water problems the result of “many years of neglect . . . in planning for the island’s future needs.”

It has been 20 years since a reservoir was built to serve the San Juan area, Colon said. In that same time, the population of the area has grown by 400,000 people.

“With rationing,” said Colon, “we are just buying time. We have a system that is just deficient.”

Residents of Puerto Rico are learning to cope. Daniel Suarez, manager of Mr. Magic Car Wash in Hato Rey, a section of greater San Juan, said that he has been able to remain open--and save the jobs of 24 employees--with a recycling system that uses only three gallons of fresh water to wash a car. “We’re doing 400 cars a day on the weekends.”

Cabdriver Orlando Lopez said that even three gallons is wasteful. He has learned to wash his vehicle, a Lincoln Town Car that he keeps impeccable, inside and out with just one gallon.

“This has been a major learning experience,” said Elsa Jimenez, who works for the Corps of Engineers and is also Colon’s wife. “Some condominiums that are unaffected by rationing have imposed their own rationing because so many people are coming to visit relatives to take showers.

“But habits are changing, and I think this will promote a lasting conservation awareness.”

Clary, a Times special correspondent, reported from Puerto Rico, and Virtue, a Times researcher, reported from Miami.