Samuel Reyes, director of the Agència Catalana de l’Aigua (ACA), warns that the Barcelona region “could enter an emergency situation in 4 or 5 months”, given the continuous drop in the level of the reservoirs in the Ter and the Llobregat (at 28% of its capacity). At that critical moment, administrations should begin to adopt more severe domestic supply cuts. However, the degree of these home restrictions will depend on “how much rain falls” and what the consumption will be in the coming months.
In the current phase of exceptionality due to drought, the restrictions with the greatest impact in the urban area are the prohibitions on irrigating parks and gardens, both public and private, with drinking water, where only survival irrigation of trees can be carried out. and bushes.
Significant limitations are also being applied for agricultural or industrial uses. However, Samuel Reyes estimates that “if a savings plan is made, in any of these sectors the percentages of these restrictions can remain at only 5%.”
However, in the event of reaching the emergency phase (with reservoirs at 16%), the restrictions in non-urban centers would be more serious. “In agricultural irrigation they would reach 80%, and in livestock 50%, while recreational activities such as golf courses would be completely prohibited” (although the impact could be mitigated if reclaimed water from treatment plants is used).
In this feared emergency phase, the ACA has planned three stages in terms of cuts in water supplies that the municipalities would carry out. In a first stage, the total endowment would go from the current 230 liters per inhabitant per day to 200 liters per inhabitant per day; in a second scenario, to 180 liters; and in the latter, to 160 liters per inhabitant per day.
“There have already been some 60 municipalities in Catalonia that have suffered supply cuts this summer when their aquifers dried up,” recalls Reyes. The Administration has paid for all of them to transport water in tanker trucks.
In the metropolitan region, it remains to be seen “when these water cuts would start, because if we lower consumption and use it responsibly, maybe we don’t have to make cuts and maybe we don’t have to lower the water pressure; Or maybe the reduction in water pressure would only affect the tallest buildings.” “We are going to see all this as these events evolve,” he adds.
The ACA has set the maximum amount of water (for all uses) that municipalities can have, and now they are the ones who must determine how this reduction in consumption should be carried out on the basis of their emergency plans.
The lack of water is very worrying. “We had never gone 30 months without rain and with such high temperatures. The average temperature has been 2.5 ºC above the climatic average in 2022 and 1.5 ºC above the average in 2021. This situation has not been recorded since 1915. When we enter a phase of El Niño I do not I can’t even imagine…”, he adds.
And “the forecasts are not very good”; “March can be a wet month, with above-average rainfall, but April and May would be average.” Concern is growing that global warming is a new enemy. “Last year, domestic consumption increased by 10%, between 10 to 15 liters per person per day”, as a consequence of the repeated heat waves.
Farmers are especially affected now, who have to cut their allowances by 40% if they do not have savings plans or do not use reclaimed water. Reyes points out that one option is to plant other crops “that consume less water”, although he admits that logically the economic productivity would not be the same”.
In this situation, the Government has approved a decree law to combat the drought that facilitates direct expropriation to occupy private land to create new infrastructures (water treatment plants, pipes…). And it puts pressure on municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants (64) to present or improve their emergency plans for the drought. Of these municipalities, 11 have not yet submitted the plan, 14 submitted insufficient documents, and 17 are in the approval process. Only 20 of them have it approved.
The municipalities had until June 2020 to present them, but the pandemic delayed this administrative process. In any case, Reyes is “sure that in a month or a month and a half” the municipalities will have all these plans and that they will not have to be penalized for this lack.
The aforementioned decree provides for fines for municipalities that do not present emergency plans against drought or offer consumption allocations higher than what is stipulated (230 liters per person per day). The fines can reach 10,000 euros (in the first case) and up to 50,000 euros, if there is repetition, in the second. The problem is that several metropolitan municipalities are providing endowments higher than the fixed limit.
Reyes promises to control the municipalities that offer more water supply than stipulated. “It is very important to know why they exceed that endowment. We must see if it is because they suffer from leaks, if they have high consumption due to having larger homes with swimming pools or other causes. All this must be analyzed by the city councils ”, he emphasizes.
Meanwhile, the ACA continues to deploy a range of emergency actions to delay these restrictions as much as possible while waiting for the rain to save the supply again, as happened in extremis in the spring of 2008.
The reuse of the water from the Llobregat, once it is used for treatment and regeneration, as well as desalination are two key pillars in the response to the drought, says Reyes. For this reason, doubling the volume of regenerated water in the El Prat treatment plant for purification is being considered. Now, from El Prat, 800 liters per second are pumped upstream to pour them into the Llobregat above the Sant Joan Despí water treatment plant (where it is mixed and diluted with the river flow), in order to supply Barcelona. And now it is planned to increase that flow to 2,000 l/s. “Now that we are exceptional, we can do it,” he explains.
Likewise, from the El Prat treatment plant, 6,000 m3/s of water are being injected into the Delta aquifer, to obtain additional underground flows and thus stop the intrusion of the salt wedge. Across the area, 150 now closed wells will also be reopened.
And, in the longer term, there are pending structural works, such as the new Tordera desalination plant, which will be operational in two and a half years, according to Reyes.
In addition, a large aid program is planned so that the municipalities of Anoia, AltPenedès and Segara can connect to the regional supply system (Calaf, Rubió, Veciana, Sant Pere Sallavinera, Copons, Sant Martí Sarroca…) created from the reservoir of the Horse Slab.
Reyes maintains that the infrastructures and hydraulic works undertaken after the great drought of 2007-2008 have been providential. “The two desalination plants (El Prat and Blanes) and the reused water have made it possible to gain 140 hm³; and, thanks to the 150 wells that were drilled, we gained another 50 hm³. All this adds up to 190 hm³, while now in the Ter-Llobregat supply system we have 175 hm³ left. Without all these additional flows in the metropolitan area, we would already be in an emergency situation”
Do we citizens consume too much water?, he asks. “If we compare ourselves with the European average, our consumption is low: between 105 and 115 liters per person per day. We have reduced a lot. Can we reduce more? That depends on each home,” says Samuel Reyes.
Among the main consumptions that can be reduced are those in the shower (“being under the shower for 10 minutes without turning off the tap is like filling the bathtub, it can mean 80 liters”) or washing dishes with the tap running, “although the electrical appliances ( dishwashers and washing machines) are becoming more efficient.
