Mayor Jaume Collboni’s government is preparing a plan to save as many trees as possible in Barcelona from the drought. Unfortunately, not all of them will be.
In a few weeks, maybe just a few days, the city will enter a state of emergency, and irrigation with potable water will be completely prohibited. What is known as survival watering of trees and palms is still allowed. And the City Council trusts that the Generalitat will very soon authorize this irrigation with phreatic water, which is neither drinkable nor can it be made potable. Right now, more or less 20% of the irrigation of Barcelona’s green areas is done with groundwater.
Therefore, the Consistory is already preparing emergency measures to multiply the use of this water that cannot be drunk: 250 workers from the Municipal Institute of Parks and Gardens and thirty large tanker vehicles will water the sites by hand of the city where the groundwater distribution system does not reach it. Local administration and unions negotiate new work shifts to optimize resources. The problem is that this great deployment will not be enough. Some green areas will simply be at the mercy of the sky and, above all, the clouds.
The streets, parks and gardens of Barcelona have around 250,000 trees and palm trees. The City Council’s priority is to save the 35,000 copies arranged in large avenues and most significant axes, both in the city center and in the neighborhoods.
We are talking about a very important part of Barcelona’s heritage. Dry lawns and shrubs are much easier to bring back, and flower beds are already doomed. Because trees and palm trees cost money, they are watered and cared for especially during the first four years of life, they always improve the quality of life of citizens… And if they are not cared for properly, they can collapse, at any time, in anywhere. The other priorities of this municipal emergency plan are the tree-planting of streets and avenues with green spaces and that of historical parks, such as the Cervantes rose garden, the Labyrinth of Horta, the Trinitat park…
The municipal chief engineer, Oriol Altisench, and the managers of Urban Services, manager Sònia Frias, and of Barcelona Cicle de l’Aigua, Cristina Vila, assured the media yesterday that the municipal plan is still being defined , who are still not clear how far they will be able to reach, that given that irrigation by hand is much less effective than piped irrigation, the worst consequences are for those who are further away from the pipes and groundwater reservoirs… The municipal technicians hinted that the Central Parks of Nou Barris and Guinardó are the ones with the most to lose.
Meanwhile, other measures designed to deal with this drought in the longer term are also moving forward. No one trusts that it will rain again like before for a long time. The city must adapt the infrastructures. The municipal technicians also explained that the City Council has already put out to tender the works to expand the groundwater network for 14.4 million euros and also those for the renewal of the garden irrigation network for 12 .2 million more.
The selection of priorities is nothing more than a preview. Everything points to the fact that the situation will worsen, that this year there will be no exceptional rainfall and that in the summer we will encounter a perfect metaphorical storm that will force restrictions on people’s water consumption. We will then be in phase 3, and the allocation of liters of water per inhabitant per day will be 160, thirteen less than the consumption recorded in November. There is a possibility that lowering the pressure is not enough. And this will surely lead to a very tough debate about how the available water should be used and which activities and needs should come first. The manager of Urban Services emphasized that all sectors are making an effort to reduce water consumption following a drought that is already structural.
