The city of Figueres plans to reduce water pressure as a savings measure to reduce domestic consumption. The multi-municipal company Fisersa will carry out tests, shortly, to study the savings that this measure will entail, which, from the City Council, indicates that it will not affect daily use.
With this action, the City Council anticipates the measures that the Generalitat may approve in the not too distant future. A few weeks ago, it became known that the Aigües de Barcelona company has been carrying out pressure tests at various points in the supply network in the Barcelona area to check the state of these pipes and evaluate the technical feasibility of generalizing this measure.
Figueres entered a state of emergency due to drought on September 26, along with 12 other municipalities in the Alt Empordà region, which are supplied from the Darnius-Boadella reservoir, which currently only has water for eight or nine more months.
The state of emergency establishes a global water supply of 200 liters per inhabitant per day per municipality. Figueres has an average consumption of 189 liters per inhabitant per day, a figure that would be reduced with this pressure reduction.
The councilor for the Environment, Núria Batrolich, justified this "step forward" that the Consistory will take with this measure and indicated that "in the face of water scarcity" the actions adopted by the Consistory "must be permanent measures" and not just temporary to stop the emergency situation.
Beyond this action, the City Council explained in a statement that it has been adopting other saving measures for months, such as the use of water from the Parc de les Aigües phreatic mine to clean the streets. Between May and September, 2,462 cubic meters have been used with this resource.
On the other hand, since October, regenerated water has been used for the treatment plant for municipal uses. It is used for irrigation of urban green areas, street cleaning, in fire fighting systems and in others. The measure saves 14,000 cubic meters per year of groundwater that is currently used for cleaning streets and sewers.
There has also been a campaign to reduce water consumption, which has led to savings of 30%, with actions to address fraud in the water supply, the regularization of contracts and the control of consumption through water meters.
