Through Facebook, Instagram, municipal edicts (some through WhatsApp) and in the municipal mailbox, the residents of the 121 municipalities that drink water from the Canal d’Urgell will receive a letter from their City Council in which they are appealed to their conscience to open the just the water tap and avoid restrictions due to the severity of the drought. The Canal d’Urgell has today closed the main channel for irrigation, guaranteeing the minimum flow to provide water to the population this summer.
Mayors of the Plà d’Urgell County Council and representatives of the Segarra, Urgell, Garrigues, Segrià and Noguera county councils, meeting on Monday night in Mollerussa, agreed on the letter in which they insisted that it is essential that the entire population is aware of the serious situation and makes responsible use of drinking water and any other use of water depending on the municipal supply.
“If the situation does not improve, restrictive measures will have to be adopted to ensure supply in a very difficult year,” says the agreed text. “We ask for the understanding and collaboration of the neighbors, and we hope that the collective effort will be key to achieve better management of a resource as valuable as water†concludes the document.
“We want to convey that the most important thing is the responsibility of each person, to get the message across to the whole world, that no one goes unnoticed that we have a critical situation and therefore that people make rational use of water, that they close plus the tapâ€, emphasizes Rafel Panadés, president of the Pla d’Urgell Regional Council, mayor of El Poal and representative, at Casa Canal, of the municipalities that drink water from the Canal d’Urgell.
“The idea is _he adds_ is to become aware that, if you have to wash the car, turn off the tap while you soap, not fill small plastic pools daily and use the municipal water or reuse the water from cleaning the lettuce to water the plants” . He insists that now is the time to ask for everyone’s understanding and collaboration, because with a collective effort we guarantee better management of these resources.
In the meeting in which the letter was agreed upon, the general director of the Urgell Canal, Xavier DÃaz, recalled that this Tuesday the main irrigation canal is closed and thus ends for the first time in history an irrigation campaign in April.
The canal will work with the winter system, which consists of opening it for one week and closing it for three. As water consumption in towns is much higher in summer than in winter, the Casa Canal will gradually replenish consumption to always have a reserve.
