The City Councils of Girona, Salt and Sarrià de Ter have put into operation the first of the two wells that should contribute to reducing the water coming from the reservoir. The two wells will allow a total of 10,000 cubic meters of water to be collected from the aquifer in the area each day, a figure that represents close to 40% of the current consumption of the three towns in winter, which have a total of more than 142,000 inhabitants.
In this way, the wells will allow the water obtained from the Pasteral II dam to be reduced by 40%, and thus relieve the pressure on the Sau reservoirs - currently at 3.23% capacity - and Susqueda, which is located 20.87%.
The wells have a depth of 300 meters and a diameter of 350 millimeters. They extract the water from the aquifer in the Pla de Sitjar area, in the municipality of Salt, thanks to water pumps. Between the two, 120 l/s will be extracted from the aquifer, the equivalent of 10,000 cubic meters per day.
A week ago the first of the two wells came into service and the second will do so in the coming days. For a month, technicians from the public company Cicle de l'Aigua del Ter (CATSA) have been in charge of carrying out tests and have verified that with the extraction of groundwater from the aquifer, it does not drop in level.
For now, the wells will be operated by a generator set. The electrification work, which began a few months ago, has already been completed but the electricity supply service has yet to be registered. According to the Plan d'Emergència per Sequera, in the emergency phase the performance of the wells must be between 75 and 100%.
These wells began to be planned during the last great drought, that of 2008. Then the ideal places for this water infrastructure were sought and the geologists recommended the Pla de Sitjar area due to the continuous presence of water. Three were built to supply water to the population in case of restrictions on the Pasteral discharge. Of the three, one sank and became unusable.
The mayor of Girona, Lluc Salellas, has highlighted "the cooperation" on the part of the three City Councils to make this measure possible, which "reduces the pressure on the Ter reservoirs and at the same time allows more water to also reach the irrigators of the Ter. Ter".
For his part, the mayor of Salt, Jordi Viñas, highlighted that Salt will provide 40% of the global water consumption of the three municipalities. He also highlighted the cooperation of the municipalities of the metropolitan area.
Finally, the mayor of Sarrià de Ter, Isaac Ramió, stated that "it is an obligation of the administrations" to implement measures that help alleviate the serious drought.
