The expansion of the Blanes desalination plant will allow the current water treatment capacity to be multiplied by four, going from 20 hm3/year to 80. The infrastructure, designed to alleviate the effects of future drought episodes, will cost 287 million euros, will fully assume the Ministry of Ecological Transition. Work could begin in 2026 and the plant would be at full capacity in 2030.
The new infrastructure will be located on land adjacent to the current desalination plant, which has been operating uninterruptedly at 100% of its capacity since last March, something that had never happened before, except in periods when it was put to the test. the equipment.
The activity of this desalination plant, together with that of El Prat, which has also been operating at maximum capacity since August 2022, has been key to slowing down the decline in reserves in the swamps, which today are at just 22% of their capacity.
The director of the Ter-Llobregat Water Supply Authority, David Vila, explained this morning during a media visit to the Blanes desalination plant that these two infrastructures have allowed the drought alert scenario to be "delayed by six months" .
The ATL supplies water to a total of 5.5 million inhabitants, a figure that includes the population of Barcelona and its metropolitan area but also other regions such as Vallès, Bages or Garraf.
The only two desalination plants in Catalonia today contribute 80 hm3 of drinking water per year to the supply network, a figure that is equivalent to the water consumed by the entire metropolitan region of Barcelona for four months.
This morning Vila detailed the schedule for the expansion of the Blanes desalination plant. The basic project, which has already been put on public display, could be put out to tender in 2024. In 2025, the construction project for the plant would be drawn up and the works would be carried out between 2026 and 2027. According to Vila, the plant could enter service in 2028 and In 2030 it would be at full capacity.
The new plant will have the same treatment capacity as that of El Prat, the largest desalination plant in Catalonia. Specifically, it will treat 60 hm3. A figure that will be added to the 20 hm3 of the current plant, which will not be dismantled. Thus, 80 hm3 per year will be treated from Blanes.
The water produced at the Blanes desalination plant is distributed among the municipalities of the Maritime Forest (Blanes, Lloret de Mar and Tossa de Mar), a dozen towns in the north of Maresme and the Ter water treatment plant, located in Cardadeu.
On the other hand, as of January 1, 2024, the Taula del Ter Agreement will come into force, which provides for the reduction of the transfer of flows from the Ter river to the province of Barcelona up to a maximum of 90 hm3 per year. .
Vila recalls that the volume of water captured from the Ter River has been progressively reduced, going from 138 hm3 in 2019 to 109 hm3 in 2022. He estimates that in 2023 the figure will be around 100 hm3.
The 45 hm3 that have been lost since 2019 are supplied by the two desalination plants in Catalonia and that will continue working at 100% of their maximum capacity, when the optimal figure is 25% or 50%. Also other smaller infrastructures such as wells or water treatment plants.
Infrastructure that, according to Vila, "prepares the country thinking not only about the current drought, but also for future scenarios." "The return period of droughts will be lower in the future, it won't take us another 15 years to suffer another episode like this one," she explains.
On the other hand, the delegate of the Generalitat in Girona, Laia Cañigueral, highlights the need to make "country investments" "to confront climate change, which today no one can deny."
