Barcelona City Council has set up a network of 22 tanker trucks that will supply groundwater to 239 cleaning vehicles and 57 for irrigation, at 26 points in the city. This is one of the measures adopted to deal with the exceptional situation due to drought. The fleet is complemented by the 25 hydrants that regularly operate in Barcelona.
As the City Council announced a month ago, 100% of the water used for street cleaning comes from the subsoil, compared to 80% in previous dates. In the case of irrigation, the use of potable water has been cut in half.
This new system presented yesterday by the Councilor for Climate Emergency, Eloi Badia, allows this kind of supply truck, with the capacity to store 20 cubic meters, to feed the smallest vehicles in the fleet of parks and gardens, from which they proceed to watering trees and shrubbery with hoses and washing down narrow streets. The sprinkler system has been discontinued, and the drop by drop and manual method are maintained. It should be remembered that irrigation has been interrupted in areas with grass and in meadows as long as it does not rain and the restrictions due to drought are maintained.
Barcelona has a total of 78 kilometers of groundwater network that allows it to supply around 5,000 cubic meters a day.
To create awareness about the need to save, Badia is in favor of city councils publishing consumption figures. In the case of Barcelona, ​​the domestic one stands at an average of 106 liters per person per day, while the city (shops, industries…) rises to 170, says the councilor. “Regarding tourism, we are working on a campaign so that the visitor is co-responsible, since now he spends twice as much as the city’s neighbor,” said Badia.
At the beginning of last March, the City Council increased the drinking water saving measures after the Catalan Water Agency decreed the hydrological exceptionality of the Ter-Llobregat basin, which supplies the city, and which limits consumption to a maximum of 230 liters per inhabitant per day in the affected municipalities.
Barcelona draws mainly from the Ter and Llobregat river basins for drinking water and from the subsoil for non-drinking water. Since 2008, when there was another remarkable episode of drought, the city intensified the mechanisms to optimize flows. Work began then to intensify the use of groundwater in 80% of street cleaning services, which has now increased to 100%, and in 18% of irrigation, which has doubled.
The Catalan capital consumes 49% of the total water in the metropolitan area. Domestic spending of 106 liters per inhabitant per day is lower than the Spanish average, which is 134.
Also yesterday, the Palamós City Council announced the use of groundwater for street cleaning on a permanent basis to save drinking flows.
