The City Council will water all the trees in Barcelona so that they can withstand this harsh summer. At least most of the trees. It is a phased operation that the technicians of the Municipal Institute of Parks and Gardens are just designing.
Until a few days ago, the restrictions dictated by the Generalitat only allowed one in three specimens in the city to be attended to. The municipal groundwater distribution network barely reaches 20% of Barcelona’s green areas, and the reinforcements of large tanker trucks and vans with tanks also did not allow the municipal gardeners to soak the 250,000 trees and palm trees in the capital Catalan They could barely water about 85,500 from time to time.
But the recent rains made it possible to lower some restrictions, leave behind the state of emergency and recover the state of exceptionality. In this context, Barcelona City Council can carry out survival irrigation drop by drop with potable water. The scope of the municipal infrastructure fed with potable water will allow the situation to be reversed. The trees in streets and squares, which are the most affected by this unforgiving drought, will benefit the most from the measure. The lawn, which is slowly becoming a thing of the past, will continue to be watered.
Municipal sources detail that, in this way, the annual consumption of water for irrigation by Barcelona City Council will gradually go from 0.87 hm3 of phreatic water and zero potable water to a total of between 1 .40 and 1.50 hm3, of which 0.90 will be potable and between 0.50 and 0.60 phreatic. In a normal situation, up to 3 hm3 was dedicated to irrigation, 2.50 of potable and 0.50 of phreatic. Imagine an island in the Eixample of the height of the W hotel. Well, roughly speaking, this volume is a hm3.
The City Council technicians understand that in this way the underground of Barcelona will be enriched. Despite the recent rainfall, it is still very dry. And the technicians also consider that, by soaking in the subsoil, the specimens will be better able to resist the temptations of a summer that is already being announced as extremely hot. In any case, some Parks and Gardens gardeners do not see it so clearly and question the City Council’s strategy.
Throughout their lives, most of the trees and palm trees in Barcelona survived thanks to precipitation and underground water. The City Council only watered the specimens during their first four years of life, to ensure that they grew vigorously. But so many years of drought were already taking their toll on the health of many trees and palms. It is not clear how many have died completely dehydrated. Recently, the same City Council estimated that nearly 2,000 died in just ten months. Many predicted that not a few specimens would not withstand the high temperatures of next summer.
“But it is not clear that these methods will save so many trees – point out gardeners from the CGT de Parcs i Jardins-. Those most affected by the drought, those on the road network, especially the most mature ones that sink their roots deep and live from underground water, hardly benefit from flooding the rocks with a few litres. This type of watering only benefits younger trees with smaller roots. But the City Council insists on maintaining an extra shift in the afternoon, despite the organizational problems it entails, that many workers are against it and that the afternoon is not the most appropriate time for irrigation. Morning hours are more convenient. That is why the Consistory is not providing exact data on the number of dead trees due to the drought. We have asked them, but we do not receive a good answer”.
