The administrations continue to explore all the possibilities of obtaining new water resources in the face of the continuous decrease in the reserves of the Ter and Llobregat reservoirs. Now it is the general management of Ports de la Generalitat that is analyzing the options to install mobile desalination plants in some ports in Catalonia.
A few days ago, the general director of Ports de la Generalitat, Annabel Moreno, had a conversation with the president of the Catalan National Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, Antoni Abad, in which she commented that the possibility of placing some desalination plants was being evaluated. mobiles in Catalan ports. The option that is open is to locate some of these plants in sports and fishing ports.
Antoni Abad explained to this newspaper that, as president of the Federation of Confraries, he views this proposal very favorably, although it still needs to mature. “You can see that they are moving,” he said, referring to the efforts of the Government departments when looking for solutions to the drought.
The proposal points out the idea of ??locating these desalination plants to respond to “the day-to-day consumption of ships” and reserve the flow for the general population. “He explained to us that, if we have a desalination plant, the water we now have can be diverted to the supply network,” Abad stated. The general management of Ports has not given more details about this initiative which, in any case, must be carried out by the Department of Climate Action, which has preferred to remain silent.
However, the fishermen specify, referring to their specific case, that “we are not big consumers of water”, since “we are becoming less and less,” says Abad. In fact, drinking water consumption on the ship is concentrated, above all, “on Fridays, when the saltpeter is cleaned and little else.”
“There are fewer and fewer fishermen and there are fewer boats,” repeats Abad. In Roses, for example, in the 90s there were 42 trawlers, while currently only 16 remain.
Abad indicates that, although the initiative could apparently provide benefits of a limited or modest scope, the Federation of Confraries supports the proposal because the drinking water that the fishermen or the port would stop consuming could increase the availability of flows for the rest of the the population. “Although it is not a definitive solution, it is welcome!” exclaims the president of the Catalan fishermen.
The conversations have not yet gone into the details of who would pay for the installation, where the plant would be located or what its dimensions would be. “We are talking about conversations that are still embryonic. But if this is something for the good of all, we support it,” reiterates Antoni Abad, willing, as he says, to “make a place in the ports so that these plants can come into operation.” “But, I insist, we do not know the measurements or the cost,” the fisherman adds.
A few days ago, Abad also had a conversation with the mayor of Roses, who raised the possibility of locating a desalination plant in an area adjacent to the fishing port and the town’s marina. The mayor explained that the city of Roses goes from having a normal population of 20,000 inhabitants to 200,000 in summer. The expressed intention would also be for the plant to serve ships and for the water that they fail to collect from the network to be diverted to the population. “The idea seems fantastic to me,” he summarized.