In March 1978, the risk of shortages was so serious in Benidorm that the water supply was limited to seven hours a day. By exploiting underground aquifers, it barely held on until August 20, when the level of the almost non-existent reserves of the Guadalest reservoir fell below the intake and submersible pumps had to be installed to extract the last cubic meters. .
The dramatic situation sparked citizen protests and led to the cancellation of tourist flights and the cancellation of hotel reservations. The second Suárez Government, in the midst of the constituent process, only found one way to avoid the paralysis of tourist activity: the transfer of water in tankers arriving from Alicante.
Experts agree that that emergency led to the awakening of awareness about the need to reuse and not waste a resource that is as scarce as it is essential. As Ciriaco Clemente, manager of Hidraqua in the Marinas Alta and Baixa, explains, “they decided then that they had to invest a lot of money in hydraulic infrastructure, but on a constant, annual basis, not sporadically.”
As a result of a management that Hidraqua assumed in 1985, an apparently paradoxical fact has been achieved: “While the population has almost doubled in the last twenty years, consumption has been reduced by 20%.” How is it possible? “Not wasting a single drop,” Clemente replies. “This cannot be achieved overnight, the network has been efficiently managed, it is renewed so that obsolete networks are eliminated, it has been digitized so that losses are controlled in real time…”
All of this means that Benidorm has achieved a hydraulic technical performance of 95% in recent years. “That borders on the unbeatable; The challenge is to maintain ourselves,” says Clemente. It must be taken into account that national use is around 70%, which means that 30% of the water that reaches a city is lost along the way, as happened in Benidorm 25 years ago.
It so happens that the tourist city only has about 72,000 registered inhabitants, but it is estimated that no less than 150,000 usually reside without being registered in the registry and the floating population in the summer months exceeds 500,000 people.
According to data published by the Water Institute of the University of Alicante, in the Marina Baixa region, the average annual precipitation is less than 400 mm/year, surface water resources are estimated at about 19hm3 and water resources underground in 39hm3, that is, a total potential natural resources of 58hm3, also characterized by strong irregularity. The average demands in this region reach approximately 63hm3/year, more than half for agricultural use.
Benidorm receives water from the Marina Water Consortium, whose main contribution is the Guadalest and Amadorio reservoirs. The first is currently at 46% of its capacity, but the second barely exceeds 18%. For emergency situations, the entire Marina Baixa area can receive contributions from the Mutxamel desalination plant, through a pipeline that connects it with Amadorio, something that last happened in 2015.
For this year, a reserve of one hm³ has been planned in the Mutxamel desalination plant, resources with which, together with the aquifers, it is intended to cover demand. If the drought persisted, between three and five more hectometers of desalinated water would be used, all of this conditional on the rainwater collected by the swamps throughout the spring.
In the Marina Baixa, the water needs for urban use far exceed surface natural resources, so it is essential to complement them with quality groundwater. As the majority of groundwater has a concession for agricultural use, it is necessary for irrigation communities to transfer groundwater flows for urban use in exchange for an exchange of that white water for regenerated wastewater that is used in irrigation.
“Cities have to be clear today that a fundamental vector of their development is water,” concludes Ciriaco Clemente, “it is not about solving a problem when it arises and then spending years without investing; no, this is not valid, “On the issue of water, you cannot be short-term.”
