Change of course. Goodbye to water boats; Welcome to portable desalination plants. The Minister of Climate Action, David Mascort, has announced that the Generalitat will install a floating desalination plant in the Port of Barcelona to be used in the event that the drought worsens in the region of Barcelona and Girona, and a degree of emergency is entered. II, which, according to current forecasts, could occur in October if it does not rain. Meanwhile, the Government has ruled out having to resort to using ships from Sagunt. The floating desalination plant could supply equivalent to 6% of the water consumption in the Barcelona area (specifically, in the area of ??27 nearby municipalities). In addition, the Government has planned the purchase of 12 mobile desalination plants for Alt Empordà, where the emergency has reached level 2 and there is a risk that the supply will be compromised this summer.
Councilor David Mascort explained that with the floating desalination plant in Barcelona, ??”more water resources” will be obtained to supply the population in the face of drought.
Floating desalination plants, equipped with a platform above the sea, are equipped with the elements and technology necessary to carry out a reverse osmosis desalination process. This solution would be activated coinciding with emergency scenario II, which is not expected to be activated before October 2024
Minister Mascort indicated that the floating desalination plant solution in the port of Barcelona is more effective, practical and cheaper than transport by ship. Specifically, he judged that it was a more “economical, environmentally more sustainable and much more stable solution to ensure supply.”
The cost would be half compared to shipping by boat.
The desalinated water in the port of Barcelona could provide 40,000 cubic meters of water per day, while each ship would only provide between 20,000 and 25,000 cubic meters (“and a ship cannot arrive every day”). In total there are 14.4 cubic hectometers per year (6% of the consumption in those 27 metropolitan municipalities).
The cost of desalinated water is also much cheaper than that of ships. The total estimated cost would be about 4.4 euros per cubic meter, which rises to 6 euros per cubic meter including depreciation, while the cost of water for ships was around 10 euros per cubic meter. (The cost of producing desalinated water, for example in El Prat, is 1 euro per cubic meter and conventional purification, which is applied when the resource comes from reservoirs, is around 0.10 or 0.20 euros. the cubic meter)
In total, it is planned that the Government will allocate 100 million euros to the floating desalination plant for operation over five years, although it is not an investment in the strict sense, but this sum includes all the costs.
The councilor clarified that these new resources will not mean any increase in the price of water for domestic users, given that this is already integrated into the current rate.
The desalination plant must be built by Abengoa, it will be placed in a facility in the port of Barcelona and the water produced will connect to the supply network directly. It will not make a new connection from the plant to the network since it will take advantage of the existing facilities that were going to be used for the discharge of water from the ships.
The desalination plant is located in the Moll de l’Energia.
On the other hand, the Government and the Costa Brava Consortium (CACBG) have bought 12 mobile or portable desalination plants to supply a dozen municipalities “in the Muga basin”, starting this June. This hydrologic exploitation unit (Darnius-Boadella) is in emergency level II.
Four portable desalination plants will be installed in Roses, four at the Empuriabrava drinking water treatment station (Castelló d’Empúries) and 4 on the beach of this municipality.
The 12 desalination plants will have an approximate cost of 10 million euros (the cost per unit is 400,000 euros) and it is estimated that each of them will produce 1,000 cubic meters of water per day, which translates into covering 35% of the demand. of water on the Costa Brava North served by the Consorci. This entity will acquire the desalination plants while the Catalan Water Agency (ACA) will grant it a subsidy of 5 million euros to help cover the investment.
The forecast is that the 8 Roses units and the Empuriabrava water treatment plant will be operational in the months of June or July while the remaining four on the Empuriabrava beach will operate towards September or October.
“Either we found a solution or the supply of drinking water in these 13 municipalities, from Portbou to Empuriabrava, was at risk this summer,” said the councilor to justify this operation.
The construction of these desalination plants is also the result of concerns expressed by farmers, who fear that if new wells continue to be drilled, there will be an increase in salinization in the fields. For this reason, the forecast is not to open more wells in Alt Empordà.
The destination of the water produced in the desalination plants installed in Roses will be this same municipality, through a connection with the downstream distribution network. The rest of the desalination plants will serve the municipalities that are supplied from the Empuriabrava drinking water treatment station: Cadaqués, Llançà, Roses, Empuriabrava, Mancomunidad de Pau, Palau-saverdera, Vilajuïga, Garriguella, Pedret y Marzà, El Port de the Selva and Selva de Mar.
For its part, the rest of the areas of the municipalities of the Costa Brava, those in the central and southern areas, have the service guaranteed. The municipalities of the Central Costa Brava are supplied from the Baix Ter unit, that is, from the water from the Sau and Susqueda reservoirs, and the municipalities of the South Costa Brava are supplied from the water from the Tordera desalination plant and the Palafolls water treatment plant.
On the other hand, it is not expected that environmental impact statements will be made to evaluate the possible damage of brines (saline waste generated in the production of water) on marine biodiversity, since, according to the minister, studies indicate that these discharges saline concentration does not cause harm to marine life.
Mascort has concluded that “the Government’s will is to protect the water in all the reservoirs, since with more than 14 hm3 per year coming from the new desalination infrastructures, every drop of water that will be saved from the reserves will be for gain resilience.”
The Government is forced to resort to desalination plants because if the current conditions imposed by the drought do not change (with reservoirs at 18% in the Ter and Llobregat system), and until the necessary infrastructure is available to stabilize the situation , it is urgent to have new resources with a guarantee to avoid entering emergency II, which would mean the application of more severe restrictions.
The new infrastructures would therefore provide service while the works planned by the Government to increase the availability of drinking water are undertaken. According to the councilor, these works will allow “by 2030 the metropolitan region of Barcelona will not depend on water from the reservoirs for its supply.”
In this way, “Catalonia is protected against the permanent lack of rain and the Government provides the country with the necessary instruments to protect itself against the drought we are experiencing,” according to spokesperson Patrícia Plaja during the press conference following the meeting of the Interdepartmental Drought Commission.
“Now, whether it rains more or not as much, this move by the Government will prevent the level of restrictions from having to be raised for the fall,” he added.
With this measure, in addition to guaranteeing drinking water for the entire population, other actions that had also been studied as alternatives are ruled out,” Plaja added.
