The Ens d’Abastament d’ Aigües Ter-Llobregat (ATL) has been losing 248,000 liters of drinking water every day in Barcelonès Nord, between Santa ColomadeGramenet and Badalona, ??for more than 15 years, due to several breaks in the pipeline that goes from the distribution station of La Trinitat, which receives water from Cardedeu, to the drinking water treatment plant of Ter. An estimated calculation of this amount indicates that the amount of water lost over 15 years would be equivalent to around 68 ships that could supply the metropolitan area of ??Barcelona in a few months.
It is an old pipeline built in the 1960s that has several leaks. The most important, as confirmed by the Catalan Water Agency (ACA), are located in the Canyet district of Badalona, ??where almost 180,000 liters are poured into the sewer every day, with the exception of those that the City Council diverts to reg. On the other hand, in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, the chlorinated water is mixed with that of the Che Guevara park fountains, in the Oliveres neighborhood, where 68,000 liters of potable water are poured every day.
It is an old cement pipe that degrades over time, so between 2003 and 2009 repair work had to be done on three more sections. Through the tube, which has a diameter of three meters, 8,000 liters circulate every second to supply drinking water to three million people in the metropolitan area and in Barcelonès Nord it has a few cracks.
This week ATL will give details about the final solution to the mayors of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Núria Parlon; from Badalona, ??Xavier Garcia Albiol, and from Montcada and Reixac, Bartolomé Egea. According to sources from the supplying entity, it is a complex work that consists of building a parallel bypass, if not about seven kilometers long, that will isolate the area of ??leaks. Once the pipe is dry, you can start operating the machinery to seal the cracks from inside the pipe.
However, the definitive solution to the loss of water in Badalona and Santa Coloma de Gramenet will not arrive until three years from now. The complexity of the works means that the parallel pipeline will not start to be built until 2025 and that they will last two more years. At the end of February 2024, ATL will open the tender, which it estimates will take eleven months, and then the work can be awarded, with an initial cost of around 38 million.
In Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Núria Parlon, although she is aware of “the complexity of the action” to repair the canalization, remembers that “action should have been taken a long time ago”. Now, faced with the emergency situation due to the drought, he warns that “urgent action is needed”. In 2023, the Colomenc City Council commissioned ATL to conduct a study to re-use the water that is being lost, such as, for example, that the forestry agents can use this water for the survival irrigation of the forest area.
Xavier Garcia Albiol assures that it “hurt his eyes” to see that, with the need for water, “180,000 liters were lost every day”, and that is why it was the City Council “who looked for a solution” , although provisional, so that the drinking water that is lost in the Canyet neighborhood is used to irrigate the parks and gardens. What they are asking ATL is to act as quickly as possible to “solve this problem”, points out the mayor of Badalona. In this municipality alone, the two liters of water per second that are poured into the sewer, at the discretion of the City Council, would make it possible to supply 1,800 residents who are now required to comply with the restrictions, under the threat of being fined .
