The grass in Plaça de les Glòries is very green while in the rest of the city it is languid. It is not a whim of those in charge of gardening, the phreatic water tank under the square makes it possible to irrigate this area and others around it, such as the central promenade of the remodeled Meridiana, in the middle of a drought.
Groundwater has proven to be a great resource for Barcelona. Even if it is not potable or potable, it is perfectly valid for watering parks and gardens and carrying out street cleaning tasks, activities affected by the restrictions resulting from the drought and which can be avoided with ground water.
From Barcelona’s subsoil, 1.2 cubic hectometres of groundwater are obtained each year, of which 250,000 come from the largest reservoir: that of the Canòpia Urbana under Plaça de les Glòries, equipped with four catchment wells water, two on the sea side and another two on the mountain side. Built when the road tunnel that passes under the Rodalies and metro tunnels was excavated, not a drop of water can be seen in these installations. The tank is on the other side of an underground wall and gigantic pipes give way to the water by pumping it to the hydrants that the vehicles connect to outside to irrigate green areas or clean streets.
The main challenge in the short term is to connect the system on this side of the city with that on the other, which supplies the mountain of Montjuïc and all its surroundings, from the reservoir in Joan Miró Park, the other in large dimensions that exist in the city. The conversion of Carrer Consell de Cent into a green axis was already thinking about this and under the newly remodeled street the phreatic water channel was previously installed which must now be completed at both ends, on the one hand Consell de Cent in Joan Miró Park, and on the other from the Glòries depot to Passeig Sant Joan, where there is an intermediate depot. The investment to make it a reality will be around four million euros and the municipal government’s intention is to put the works out to tender over the coming months through the public company Barcelona Cicle de l’Aigua (BCasa).
With this action, all the vegetation recently planted in the green axis of Consell de Cent will be irrigated with ground water and will not suffer even if the drought continues. “We are doing our homework and one of the resources we have is ground water, which will now also reach a part of the city where there was none”, emphasizes deputy mayor Laia Bonet. The intention of this strategic interconnection is to supply the green axis through which the canalization passes, but also the rest of the green areas in the Eixample district by means of the Parcs i Jardins tanker trucks.
The intention is to promote a network that connects as far as possible the 30 groundwater tanks that are distributed throughout the city, with their corresponding 30 hydrants to load the water trucks. All this connected in one way or another with a 100 kilometer network that interconnects some of the deposits and already forms, for example, a ring that goes from Les Glòries to Rambla Prim on the one hand and to the Citadel of the other and also covers the entire coastal front. In this way, to give an example, the water captured in the Glòries aquifer feeds the Diagonal Mar lake.
A performance will also take place in the Besòs area, and also in Can Batlló and Montjuïc. In total, 14.4 million euros, framed within the Endreça plan, to expand the groundwater network with adaptation of the existing infrastructure and construction of new sections of the network of pipelines and hydrants. In this way, 1.4 cubic hectometres will be obtained. There is room ahead, since the Catalan Water Agency (ACA) allows Barcelona to extract up to 4.4 hectometres.
