The government of Mayor Jaume Collboni is finalizing a plan to save as many trees in Barcelona as it can from drought. Unfortunately it won't be all of them.
In a few weeks, perhaps just a few days, the city will enter an emergency situation, and irrigation with drinking water will be completely prohibited. What is known as survival irrigation of trees and palms is still permitted. And the City Council trusts that the Generalitat will very soon authorize it to do so with groundwater, which is neither drinkable nor can it be made drinkable. At the moment, more or less 20% of the irrigation of Barcelona's green areas is carried out with groundwater.
So the City Council is already preparing its emergency measures to multiply the use of these waters that cannot be drunk: 250 workers from the Parcs i Jardins municipal institute and around thirty large tanker vehicles will water by hand those places in the city where the phreatic distribution system is not enough. The local administration and unions are negotiating new work shifts to optimize resources. The problem is that this large deployment will not be enough. Some green areas will simply be at the mercy of the skies and especially 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 on 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 grasses and shrubs are much easier to recover, and flower beds are already condemned. Because trees and palm trees cost money, they are watered and pampered especially during their 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 any place. The other priorities of this municipal emergency plan are the tree planting of streets and avenues with green spaces and the historic parks, such as the Roserar Cervantes, the Laberint d'Horta, the Trinitat park...
The municipal chief engineer, Oriol Altisench, and those responsible for Urban Services, the manager Sònia Frias, and of Barcelona Ciclo del Agua, Cristina Vila, assured the media this Wednesday that the municipal plan is still being defined, that it has not yet They are clear about how far they can go, that since hand irrigation is much less effective than channeled irrigation, the worst votes are those that are furthest from the pipes and groundwater tanks... The municipal technicians implied that The Central parks of Nou Barris and Guinardó are the ones with the worst results.
Meanwhile, other measures designed to address this drought in the longer term are also advancing. No one expects it to rain again for a long time. The city has to adapt its infrastructure. 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 the renewal of the irrigation network for the gardens for another 12.2 million. .
The selection of priorities is nothing more than a preview. Everything indicates that the situation will worsen, that this year there will not be exceptional rainfall and that this summer we will encounter a metaphorical perfect storm that is not literal that will force us to establish restrictions on people's water consumption. Then we will find ourselves in phase 3, and the provision of liters of water per inhabitant per day will be 160, thirteen less than the consumption recorded this November. It is possible that lowering the pressure will not be enough. And this will surely lead to a very tough debate about how the available water should be used, what activities and needs should come first. The Urban Services manager highlighted that all sectors are making an effort to reduce water consumption in the face of a drought that is already structural.
