The City Council of Esponellà, in the Pla de l’Estany region (Girona), has announced that it will open a sanctioning file against one of its just over 400 residents after verifying that during 2023 he consumed 5,200 m³ of water from the urban supply network. , that is, 5,200,000 liters of water in one year. In application of municipal ordinances, the person responsible for this waste could receive a fine of between 1,500 and 3,000 euros and, if consumption is not urgently reduced, they could be sanctioned with the withdrawal of the water supply, as David explained. Juan, mayor of Esponellà.
The consumption detected in this reported address (5.2 million liters of water) is evidently very high, as can be seen with a simple comparison with the usual average consumption. In the case of Esponellà, specifically, the most recent figures from the Catalan Water Agency (ACA) indicate an average consumption of 153.26 liters of water per person per day. If the reported case corresponded to a family of three members ( a hypothesis, because no data have been provided in this regard), the normal average consumption would be 167,819 liters per year, that is, 30 times less than what was actually consumed. In other words, the denounced family used as much water in 2023 as 30 families of this municipality together.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the volume spent at the reported home is among the 10 highest water consumption in the municipality in 2023, with a total similar to or greater than that of almost all farms, camp houses, restaurants or the Esponellà nursing home, as indicated by David Juan.
How did the reported neighbor use so much water? After reviewing the data provided by the home supply concessionaire company and detecting the large consumption of water on this property, the City Council contacted the owners, with whom it held a meeting last Monday, “and they recognized that the problem It may be motivated by the lack of control or malfunction of one of the various automatic systems that they have on the property for automatic irrigation of the garden and maintenance of the pool level, without ruling out that the pool has a hidden leak and is being refilled. of water automatically,” the mayor of Esponellà explained to La Vanguardia.
The owners have admitted their responsibility for the waste, indicating that it occurred involuntarily and have promised to solve the problem immediately, “otherwise, in addition to the fine, we could even remove the meter and suspend the water supply.” , the mayor has indicated. “The fines, even if they are up to 3,000 euros, may be insufficient.”
One of the details that surprised the mayor in this case is that the owners have not taken measures to reduce consumption before the sanction was announced. “The supply company had sent a notice for excess consumption in the last two invoices but the owners did not seem to do anything until the City Council intervened,” laments the mayor. Furthermore, “not even the very high cost of the water bill that they had received in recent quarters has taken effect; it seems that they paid without looking at anything at all,” concludes David Juan.
“The interest of the City Council in publicizing this case is to make citizens aware of the need to reduce water consumption, especially in situations like the current one, and to do so, have close monitoring of consumption and compliance with regulations such as the one that prohibits watering gardens or filling swimming pools,” says the mayor.
“When people began to talk about ACA sanctions against city councils for exceeding water supplies, we thought that we were being unfairly blamed but, on the other hand, now we have seen that this threat has forced us to better monitor consumption and find cases as spectacular as this one in Esponellà, acknowledges the mayor.
