Municipalities in the Solsonès region where the supply of water for livestock uses is guaranteed through the general domestic supply network have made public their discomfort and expressed their complaints for having been pointed out by the Catalan Agency for l’Aigua (ACA) as responsible for an excessive expenditure of water in the current drought. These municipalities depend on a single network through which the service is provided for both domestic and livestock use.
The discomfort of these councils has transcended after the ACA announced on Wednesday the water consumption in the internal basins, which made it possible to verify that 36% of the municipalities exceed the water allocation set by the Generalitat for the phase of exceptionality (230 liters per person per day).
“We have shown our anger and some indignation to the Water Agency because the data it has provided on water consumption in our municipality lends itself to a misinterpretation”, Xavier Vilalta, mayor of Pinós (Commitment by Pinós). “We are consuming the same or less than the rest of Catalonia; what happens is that in this municipality there are a lot of livestock farms, chickens, pigs, calves, and this causes consumption to skyrocket”, says the mayor. “The ACA should have taken all this into account before reporting, because it leaves us in a bad place,” he says.
The Generalitat has established for municipalities a maximum allocation of 230 liters of water per person per day, but in localities without a separation of the supply network that distinguishes domestic consumption from livestock farmers there may be imprecise information. Vilalta adds that the ACA has promised that this differentiation will be taken into account in the future information it offers. This circumstance affects all the municipalities of the Mancomunitat d’Abastament d’Agua del Solsonès, which are nourished with resources from the Cardener, where disproportionate consumption data has been offered: Pinós (1,339 litres), Clariana de Cardener (784 litres) , Riner (562) or Olius (542).
“Our networks do not separate the domestic supplies from the livestock farmers”, also explains Ingrid Melero, mayoress of Clariana, who was surprised by this controversy four days after her election as mayoress.
Sources from the ACA indicated that the data on consumption offered “are provided by the municipalities themselves or by supply entities” and that “from the ACA we do not modify or touch the figures”. For this reason, they indicate that “if a municipality accounts jointly for household and livestock consumption, it can request to provide the data separately”. They added that “if we see that a piece of data doesn’t fit, we contact them”. Jordi Codina, technician of the Mancomunitat del Solsonès, specified Clariana’s data: 468 liters per person per day, of which 357 liters are for farms, 37 liters for domestic use and 74 for industrial use.
Apart from certain specific situations and the need to purify the information, sources from the ACA indicate that the dissemination of water consumption must serve for municipalities to make more rational use of this resource. The cases of exceeding water allocations are due to unjustified excessive consumption, occasional leaks, the existence of inefficient networks or technical errors in the information provided. On Tuesday, the Government approved a subsidy line of 50 million euros to help municipalities repair or improve networks.
The ACA also revealed that a further 8% of municipalities have not even provided data, while it has been seen that municipalities in the metropolitan area are particularly compliant. Even so, in the central region of Catalonia there are municipalities that far exceeded the 230 liter threshold: for example, Sant Esteve Sesrovires (394 liters), Matadepera (363) or Cubelles (325). In the same way, Castellet and la Gornal (427), Vilobí del Penedès (421) or Pacs del Penedès (383) exceeded the bar.
The ACA has sent more than 90 requests and has opened thirty penalty files for not presenting the data, which can be a “warning sound”, although the penalties for having exceeded the water allocations will start in the coming months.
