The transportation of water by boat, now agreed upon by administrations as an extreme solution to drought, is not a new circumstance. In May 2008, the Catalan capital hosted a fleet of tankers designed as another contribution to alleviate the scarcity of resources. At the beginning of that year, the Catalan Water Agency (ACA), an organization attached to the Generalitat, made a forecast to contract 190 trips for a value of 53,453 million euros, which means that each boat trip had to cost 281,331 euros.
However, the miraculous arrival of rains that same month forced plans to change and the maritime supply was interrupted.
In the end, only 24 trips were necessary, which cost 17,159 million euros; More than half of that amount was paid to the shipping companies as compensation upon termination of the contract. The result is that in the end each boat trip cost 714,977 euros.
The Generalitat decided at the beginning of 2008 to resort to transporting water by boat when it realized that the Ter and Llobregat reservoirs were close to 20%, which led to the entry into emergency and the announcement of domestic restrictions for the end of summer.
To organize water transport, the ACA looked for water resources in the flows of the Ebro mini-transfer in Tarragona as well as in the purified waters of the Rhône canals. To do this, it formalized three contracts with the Agbar company, so that an operation was scheduled with six ships on three routes: one from Tarragona (from the Ebro mini-transfer to Tarragona) and two to capture water from the Rhône (from the Fhilippe Lamour Canal). ), which departed from the ports of Marseille and Lavèra. Two ships were to sail for each route, with the expectation of transporting 4,977,570 m3.
Therefore, it was planned to move, on average, ships with a load of 26,000 m3 each. Now it is planned to bring a ship with 20,000 m3 from the Sagunt desalination plant every day, and councilor David Mascort does not rule out a second supply point.
As of May 2008, maritime supply began; but the rains began to fill the reservoirs; and all this radically changed the availability of water resources for urban supply. In this way, on June 6, 2008, the director of the Catalan Water Agency decided to terminate the contracts. And, once these were definitively settled, the total costs amounted to 17,159,450 million euros (VAT not included).
Practically half of that sum that taxpayers paid was due to the penalty for early termination of contracts (8,965,716 euros), while the cost of water in the strict sense amounted to 7,238,172 euros and the rest went to rents, taxes, analytics, surveillance laboratories (just under a million euros). All expenses were assumed by the ACA. There were no contributions from the State desalination plants.
In total, 24 trips were actually made (18 from Tarragona and 6 from Marseille) and 527,712 m3 were transported, which is the equivalent of one day's water consumption in the first metropolitan ring of Barcelona (understood as the 23 municipalities served). by Aigües de Barcelona, where 2.9 million people live). In this first metropolitan ring, about 500,000 m3 of water are consumed per day.
How many people can a boat supply water to? Each ship with a load of 20,000 cubic meters like those now announced could provide water for the equivalent of 4% of the population of this first metropolitan ring (2.9 million people).
Meanwhile, the port of Barcelona, with resources from the ACA, will carry out works to expand the infrastructure that allows water to be discharged from ships and injected into the Aigües de Barcelona facilities. The current connection allows for the discharge of, at most, 10,000 cubic meters per day, which is half the water that a ship would carry from the Sagunt desalination plant, according to Cadena Ser reported yesterday. The objective of the work that will be carried out along the route The urgency is for this amount to be multiplied by four and allow the volume of water that fits in two boats to be landed each day.
