We are in a race against time. The Catalan Government has announced its intention to activate and advance the works and investments in hydraulic matters that were included in the failed agreement of the drought summit of the parties. The so-called drought summit concluded on Friday without the expected pact between the political formations. The PSC’s refusal to accept fines for municipalities that do not have an emergency plan or that exceed the maximum water allocations established by the Government prevented the document from being agreed. “We have the will to promote the works and investments foreseen in the document, even if it is not initialed”, the Government spokesmen point out. These actions can be largely undertaken by the Government itself without the need for a modification of the decree-law on drought validated by Parliament a few days ago.
The Government’s meeting with the parties stumbled on the disagreement on the date on which the sanctioning regime should be applied against non-compliant municipalities (ERC wanted July 1 and the PSC asked for a one-year extension); but with regard to the rest of the points there was agreement between the parties.
The pre-agreement document – to which this newspaper has had access – included the provision to “enable an extraordinary budget item” from the Generalitat to deal with the drought.
The text includes the Government’s commitments to provide 50 million euros to municipalities through a new line of subsidies from the Catalan Water Agency, as well as the expansion of the current budget allocation from 25 to 40 millions of euros. This was a demand from the PSC, which calls for “investments and no sanctions” for councils. The intention is that the new line of subsidies will serve to improve the efficiency of networks and sectorize, digitize and auscultate leaks.
The pre-agreement included the desire to speed up the works that are included in the current hydrological planning (such as the award in this first semester of the works on the Blanes desalination plant or the bidding process for the Cubelles desalination plant project) and the incorporation to this planning of two new drinking water treatment plants in the lower section of the Besòs and the regeneration of the waters of the treatment plant of Sant Feliu de Llobregat for reuse.
Likewise, works are included that lead to an increase in potable water treatment capacity (at the plants in Sant Joan Despà and Abrera, in the Llobregat, and in Cardedeu, for the flows of the Ter), the increase in underground catchments in the lower Besòs basin or the extension of the biological treatment at the El Prat treatment plant to be able to push more regenerated water upstream and make it potable in Sant Joan DespÃ.
Similarly, it is planned to extend the use of regenerated water from the Prat treatment plant to the industries of the Zona Franca or to do the same with the flows from the Sabadell treatment plant so that they are also reused in Cerdanyola and Sant Cugat del Vallès
In another chapter of the pre-agreement it was also agreed to “ask the Spanish Government for all possible funding to accelerate the actions described throughout the document and especially the arrival of European funds to finance the water cycle”.
It was also agreed to “support the drafting of emergency and savings plans for municipalities with less than 20,000 inhabitants”, which (unlike those with more than this amount) can present their plans voluntarily.
Another innovative point is that it is agreed that it is convenient to “publish the consumption” of water broken down by municipality (claimed by En Comú Podem), as well as the allocations per capita and their losses in the network, to guarantee the public transparency and prioritizing improvement actions in municipalities with more consumption.
It was also agreed to modify the special drought plan (of January 8, 2020) to allow municipal swimming pools to be filled for “public health reasons”, as requested by the councils of the Metropolitan Arc (second metropolitan crown) . The special drought plan prohibits the filling of swimming pools during the alert and exceptional (current) phases. The only exception is the fact of partially filling the swimming pools that have a water recirculation system to make up for the flow losses due to evaporation and filter cleaning in order to guarantee the sanitary quality of the water. For this, the true light of the ACA will be enough.
