The water supply entity, Aigües Ter-Llobregat (ATL), has lost 248,000 liters of drinking water every day in Barcelonès Nord, between Santa Coloma de Gramenet and Badalona, ??for more than 15 years, due to several breaks in the pipeline. which runs from the Trinitat Distribution Station, which receives water from Cardedeu and sends it to the Ter water treatment plant. It is an old pipeline built in the 60s that has several leaks. The most important, as confirmed by the Catalan Water Agency (ACA), are located in the Canyet neighborhood of Badalona, ??where every day almost 180,000 liters are poured into the sewer, with the exception of those that the City Council diverts for irrigation. In Santa Coloma de Gramenet, on the other hand, chlorinated water is mixed with that from the fountains of Che Guevara Park, in the Les Oliveres neighborhood, where 68,000 liters of water suitable for consumption are poured daily.
It is a large old cement tube that degrades over time, so between 2003 and 2009 repair work has already had to be carried out on three other sections, the latter being the most technically complex.
The tube has a diameter of three meters through which 8,000 liters circulate every second to supply drinking water to three million people in the metropolitan area and in Barcelonès Nord it has several cracks through which drinking water is lost.
This week, ATL will give details about the final solution to the mayors of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Núria Parlon, of Badalona, ??Xavier Garcia Albiol and that of Montcada i Reixac, Bartolomé Egea. According to sources from the supplying entity, this is a complex work that consists of building a parallel bypass, approximately seven kilometers long that will isolate the leak area. Once the pipe dries, the machinery can begin to operate to seal the cracks from inside the pipeline.
The definitive solution to the loss of water in Badalona and Santa Coloma de Gramenet, however, will not arrive for three years. The complexity of the works means that the parallel pipeline will not begin construction until 2025 and will last two years. At the end of February of this year ATL will open the tender, which it estimates will take 11 months to process, after which the work can be awarded, which initially amounts to around 38 million euros.
In Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Núria Parlon, although she is aware of “the complexity of the action” to repair the canal, remembers that “action should have been taken a long time ago.” Now, faced with the emergency situation due to the drought, she warns that “urgent action is necessary.” In 2023, the Colomian City Council commissioned ATL to carry out a study to reuse the water that is being lost, such as allowing Forestry Agents to use it for survival irrigation in the forest area.
For his part, Xavier Garcia Albiol assures that “my eyes hurt” to see that with the need for water that there is “180,000 liters were lost every day” and that is why “it was the City Council that sought a solution” although provisional, to that the drinking water that is lost in the Canyet neighborhood be used to irrigate parks and gardens. “What we ask ATL is to speed up the deadlines” and to go as quickly as possible to “solve this problem.”
In Badalona alone, the two liters of water per second that are poured into the sewer, at the discretion of the Consistory, would allow it to supply 1,800 residents, who are now, on the other hand, required to comply with the restrictions, under the risk of being sanctioned.