The tender for the study to draw up the construction project for the transfer of the collector of Llevant, between Badalona and Sant Adrià de Besòs, towards the interior is the first piece to start the concatenation of several projects that will promote the transformation of the coast of Besòs, for now one of the most polluted areas in Spain.
With the drafting of the project to move the collector inland, which is six years late, the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB) will be able to award the works next February to begin them in the first quarter of 2025. The operation will have a cost approximately 19 million euros. The work will last 17 months, but will continue for 21 months, since it is planned that they will be paralyzed during the summer so as not to affect the swimming season.
The transfer of the Llevant collector is the key that opens the door to the development of the new neighborhood around the Catalunya Media City digital hub, in the three chimneys of the old thermal power plant. A neighborhood of 1,783 apartments that tries to avoid the administrative litigation promoted by the neighborhood platform contrary to the urban development of the coast.
The collector relocation project is divided into two sections, between the Badalona Swimming Club and the port, and from this to the Besòs treatment plant. The collector of Llevant has a length of 10.8 kilometers and goes to the coast of Montgat. The affected section is 30% of the pipeline.
Modifying the route of the collector also forces the administration to decontaminate the soil, especially in the area between the Mora neighborhood and the port of Badalona, although it will also give rise to definitively cleaning up the beaches of Sant Adrià. This coastal area, according to the data extracted from the study commissioned by the Besòs Consortium, is highly contaminated and, for the moment, maintains the classification of “non-compliant” with the use of human activities, given the high rate of presence of heavy metals such as antimony, arsenic, barium, cadmium, cobalt, copper, lead and zinc, as well as hydrocarbons such as anthracene, benzene, benzopyrem and fluoranthene, pesticides and chlorates. The cleaning of this space alone is quantified at 13 million euros. To clean up the land, the AMB will execute an excavation and management plan.
In Badalona, the tender to begin the transfer of the Llevant collector has been received with special pleasure, since the infrastructure is one of the main emitters of floating solids and maritime pollution of the coast. The breakage of the pipeline at several points during the storms of 2015 and 2017 forced emergency actions to protect the pipe with new breakwaters.
Apart from the rainwater tanks that the Badalona City Council plans to build to mitigate wastewater discharges into the sea, the AMB will apply other strategies such as the construction of non-permeable green areas that, in turn, can act as rainwater filters. , which will also favor the recharge of aquifers. Another option is the placement of solids retention elements in the collector spillways.
Along these lines, the system is designed so that the first rains, the most polluting, can be diverted to a containment tank or directly into the collector. If precipitation is persistent, the water will inevitably end up in the sea, but with a much lower degree of contamination and without the presence of floating solids.
