The announcement of the floating desalination plant in the port of Barcelona, ??added to the decree law that leaves it in the hands of the city councils to decide which public and private swimming pools will be able to open this summer, has unleashed indignation in the Barcelona City Council. A forceful first deputy mayor, Laia Bonet, showed her “surprise, disappointment and concern” for what she considers “an irresponsible government action, more typical of a party in campaign than of a responsible administration.”
Bonet insisted that these decisions “improvised and at the stroke of a decree, not participated in and not contrasted, generate a very great concern and we expect the worst.” The deputy mayor fears that the commitment to the desalination plant, “about which we know little, only that it will cost 100 million”, will compromise structural solutions, “projects that are planned and not executed.”
The municipal government regrets that the issue of the desalination plant has not been raised at any time in the drought working group promoted by the City Council itself and in which all administrations and entities related to water management participate. “At this table we have raised and resolved issues such as the initial prohibition of irrigating with groundwater or filling public pools,” he explained.
Laia Bonet did not want to go into how they will manage the opening of the private pools: “We will not fall into their improvisation game; “We will work on what we have powers, which are public swimming pools, and we will treat them all as climate refuges.”
