The rains that have fallen since the end of last week have made possible a certain recovery of the level of the reservoirs in the Barcelona region served by the Ter and the Llobregat. However, the accumulated volume is at 20% of maximum capacity, which shows that we are far from overcoming the drought.
Meanwhile, the forecast is that the accumulated resources will increase in the coming days, thanks to the new contributions. “It is expected that the trend of recovery will continue in the coming days, since the headwaters of the rivers still carry a lot of water and the thaw will serve to gradually feed the flow of the rivers”, say the technicians of the Catalan Water Agency (ACA ).
The region of Barcelona, ??areas of Girona and the Costa Brava continue to be in a state of emergency in degree I, without being able to specify which day the current restrictions can be lifted (for agricultural, livestock, urban uses and, even households in many localities).
Despite everything, the result is that we continue to be in drought. The precipitation is “good news, but it is not enough to say that the situation has turned around”, stated the Government spokesperson, Patrícia Plaja. The reserves of the internal basins of Catalonia are at 19.1% of capacity, with 133 hm3. And, in the specific case of the Ter Llobregat system, which supplies the metropolitan area of ??Barcelona and part of Girona, it is at 20%, with 122.5 hm3.
The spokeswoman indicated that there is no date to leave the state of emergency. “We will not maintain the restrictions for the sake of maintaining them, because we know how they condition the daily life of all sectors of the country. When we are certain that we can turn the situation around because we have enough reserves, we will come out of the emergency, but it would be premature to say so today”, he said.
The Councilor for Climate Action, David Mascort, set the reserve threshold at 25% to consider exiting the emergency phase and moving to the previous one. However, the decision will not only depend on this figure, but also on the short-term rain forecast and the time of year.
The worst of the drought is behind us, but the emergency has not disappeared for a geographical area made up of around 200 municipalities where six million people live. The improvement in the situation has intensified since Thursday and Friday of last week and, especially, since Monday of this week, when an episode of rain was recorded that had not been recorded in Catalonia since the autumn of 2021 (in November). The episode of precipitation has had beneficial effects in almost the entire territory, and has led to very high increases in flow, especially in the lower Llobregat and Besòs basins.
Meanwhile, at the headwaters of the rivers there has also been a significant increase in flow (43.7 m3/s in the Ter in Ripoll and 40.7 m3/s in the Llobregat in Guardiola de Berguedà), and the negative trend has been broken in the Darnius Boadella reservoir (at 12.5%).
