“The reduction of water pressure in the supply network is one of the scenarios that we have foreseen in the most serious phase of the emergency due to the drought,” says Joan Herrera, head of the energy and environment area of ??the El Ayuntamiento de El Prat de Llobregat. Barcelona City Council has also included extreme measures in its emergency plan to deal with the worst-case scenario, including a drop in network pressure and hourly supply cuts, according to what Eloi Badia, Barcelona mayor of Emergència Climàtica, explains to this newspaper. .
These are two examples of how the municipalities of the Barcelona and Girona region (supplied mainly by the Ter and Llobregat) see the threat of domestic restrictions increasingly closer if it does not rain; better said, if it doesn’t rain and a lot.
More than 30 months with hardly any rainfall have reduced the volume of water in the reservoirs to a quarter of their capacity (27%).
And given the possibility that an emergency could be entered (when the reservoirs are at 17%), the Government urges the municipalities to prepare local plans to deal with the drought, detailing the saving measures and domestic cuts that they could apply.
The limitations on the use of water now affect 224 municipalities in 15 counties and some six million people. The Generalitat has been reducing the amount of water available (according to the established alert, exceptional and emergency scenarios).
These limitations have focused on the exceptional phase in the agricultural, livestock and industrial sectors (with cuts of 40%, 30% and 15% respectively); and, in addition, the use of drinking water for irrigation of parks and public and private green areas, among others, has been prohibited.
But if the emergency phase is reached, the limitations for these uses will rise by 80%, 50% and 25% respectively. And, furthermore, there would be a new turn of the screw: the current supply, of 230 l per person per day for all uses, will have to be further cut to the municipalities.
Then it will be the city councils who will have to decide which savings measures or cuts are implemented, which would affect basic domestic restrictions.
Sources from Agbar (a company that provides the service in 23 metropolitan municipalities) maintain that, in order to carry out the control and regulation of the new water supplies, “one of the variables on which action can be taken is a reduction in water pressure and the possible time cuts”.
A cut in water pressure, they admit, could have a greater effect on the higher floors, while the lower floors would hardly notice it, they specify.
“The technicians warn us that if there are time cuts, there is a risk that the lines will be affected”, Joan Herrera clarifies. “These cuts do not guarantee lower water consumption, since if there are breaks in the pipes, it would be worse,” he adds.
The Generalitat is demanding that the town halls prepare actions for the emergency phase; and, among the measures to which they can resort are “pressure reductions or timed supply cuts” (according to the special plan that was approved in January 2020). Even, in an extreme case, there could be “temporary suspension in the provision of the supply service,” says that document.
The 64 municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants had until June 2020 to present their plans against the drought. However, they only have it less than half (27); nine of them have not yet presented it (Calafell, Cerdanyola, Cornellà, Esparraguera, Figueres, Molins de Rei, Ripollet, Valls and Viladecans), 11 have obtained an unfavorable assessment from the Catalan Water Agency (ACA) and 17 have in process
The drought decree validated this week by Parliament foresees large fines for municipalities that do not present these plans, which has caused discomfort in some of them. “The intention of the decree is not to sanction, but to dissuade and for the councils to do their duties”, says the Councilor of Climate Action, Teresa Jordà.
Meanwhile, the rains of recent weeks have not allowed the level of the reservoirs to recover and have only served to stop their agonizing decline in reserves.
To leave behind the situation of drought and recover normality, “it would be necessary for some 500 liters per square meter to fall” in the headwaters; that is, all that rains in a year in the metropolitan region of Barcelona, ??say sources from the Agència Catalana de l’Aigua (ACA).
At the current rate, “if between April and May it does not rain at all, or it rains very little, an emergency could be entered towards the end of August or the beginning of September.”
Eloi Badia, Vice President of Ecology for the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, views with concern that many municipalities, even in the alert phase, were far exceeding the water allocations set by the Government. For this reason, he claims to know the consumption of all the municipalities and to undertake urgent actions in those that are far from meeting the Government’s requirements.
“The endowments are now 230 liters per person per day (for all uses), and Barcelona’s is at 170 liters, while many municipalities are above that figure,” he says to request decisive action from the Government. Badia says that “in a few days the metropolitan municipalities that have not presented the drought plan would have it.”
The metropolitan mayor is more concerned about the fact that there are municipalities that are consuming more than 500 liters per person per day and have a drought plan than the fact that a municipality is consuming 190 liters and does not have one.
The Generalitat guarantees the supply mainly through the reservoirs, the two desalination plants (El Prat and Blanes) and reused water regenerated at the El Prat de Llobregat treatment plant facilities. It is not ruled out that new emergency works can be introduced, although the ACA spokesmen are prudent, waiting for a summit with parties to be held next Friday.
ACA sources point out that in the short term it is not possible to expand the production of desalinated water, although the process is advancing to make a new desalination plant in the Tordera that should be ready before 2027 (60 hm3), although maximum acceleration is claimed.
In addition, a fourth desalination plant is planned in the Foix, but on a more distant horizon. And it is planned to double the reclaimed water.
The maneuvering capacity to face the drought is running out and for this reason one of the main weapons is being the increase in the reuse of water from the Llobregat. The regenerated flow that is poured into the lower section of the Llobregat to be reused has doubled (it is now 1,200 l/s).
How is it done?
The water from the El Prat treatment plant is subjected to additional treatment in a regenerative plant (to provide pre-potable water) and is pumped upstream until it is discharged at the height of Molins de Rei, so that it is diluted in the Llobregat and they can be made drinkable from Sant Joan Despí, from where they are incorporated into the supply network.
Agbar sources indicate that the new actions underway (La Llagosta water treatment plant, use more reclaimed water…) are not enough (“we cannot stay here”) and reiterate their proposal in favor of massively regenerating the waters of the lower section of the Besòs with Next Generation funds, through the great project presented to the Government and estimated at around 1,500 million euros.
Obtaining regenerated water continuously is the desired option. If more regeneration water is achieved, more desalination and more potabilization, an additional 180 hm3 would be available, say company sources. It would be the way not to depend on the unpredictable rain to guarantee the supply.
The Generalitat rejects the idea of ??interconnecting the supply networks of the Barcelona region with the supply networks of the Ebro, as proposed this week by the environment commission of the Col legi d’Enginyers de Camins.
The water policies promoted by the ERC Government do not provide for transfers or interconnections between river basin districts, but rather “seek solutions from the basin itself through the diversification of conventional water sources” on the one hand (reservoirs, aquifers, saving , efficiency ) and “obtaining new water” (desalination, regeneration and reuse) on the other, in line with the water framework directive and the objectives of environmental, guarantee, economic and social sustainability of the measures, say ACA sources . “The interconnection does not take into account -apart from the economic aspects- the social, environmental and territorial ones”.
The Generalitat has not foreseen any extraordinary emergency work in the drought decree validated by Parliament. The ACA justifies it by saying that any work or investment in infrastructure requires that it be included in the approved hydrological planning and have its financing assigned and guaranteed “something that cannot be done in a decree law”.
However, broad sectors maintain that the drought is not entirely to blame for the situation; This is influenced by the lack of administrative agility and the low investment since 2008. The argument of the sectors critical of the Government is that after the drought of 2008, investments to provide themselves with new water resources have been very low. The actions basically consisted of the construction of the new El Prat desalination plant, which was already underway when the drought occurred, and the expansion of the Tordera desalination plant.
ACA sources reply that as a result of the 2008 drought, this organization undertook large investments that left a debt of 1,500 million euros. “And that led to having to draw up a stabilization and return plan for this debt, which was finished being settled in 2018. During the years 2010-2017, priority had to be given to the return of the debt,” they argue.
Narcís Prat, who has been a professor of Ecology at the UB for many years, points out that the uncertainties imposed by climate change and rainfall variability on reservoir reserves are so great that they make it necessary to look for alternative resources. Saving water, promoting the reuse of regenerated water in treatment plants and the use of rainwater are his three proposals.
Despite Barcelona’s low water consumption, the professor maintains that it is still possible to achieve savings of “8, 10 or 12 liters per person per day” (in gray water spending) to get closer to that minimum consumption of 80 liters per person and day that occurs in some neighborhoods of Santa Coloma de Gramenet. Prat also considers it a priority to encourage the use of rainwater, especially on roofs, collecting in many residences in urbanizations, where there is a large consumption of water. This is a necessity in these urbanizations, where water is extracted from wells and aquifers that leave the rivers dry. All of this would result in less pressure on the rivers and in their ecological improvement.
Annelies Broekman, a CREAF researcher on water and global change, maintains that a “chronically unsustainable mismatch between demand and availability of resources” is taking place in the Barcelona region. Broekman argues that this overpressure even occurs in situations of apparent “normality”.
“We are taking natural systems to the limit, and this can be seen in the contamination of the Llobregat or in the fact that the environmental flows of the Ter, which are the sources of supply, are not respected.” For this reason, for this specialist, the emergency can only be addressed “before the drought arrives”, which means focusing efforts on the restoration of ecosystems and aquifers, so that they fulfill all their biological functions, including resilience against to climate change.
This specialist is wary that improvements in efficiency can reduce the total amount of water consumed and indicates that the consumption model needs to be reconsidered, such as the one promoted by the current tourism industry. For the metropolitan region, desalination and reuse can help to cope with times of drought.
