We are in a race against time. The Catalan Government has announced its intention to activate and advance the works and investments in hydraulic matters included in the frustrated agreement of the summit of the drought of the parties. The so-called drought summit concluded on Friday without the expected pact between the political formations. The refusal of the PSC to accept the fines to the municipalities that do not have an emergency plan or that exceed the maximum amounts of water established by the Government, prevented the document from being agreed. "Our will to promote the works and investments provided for in the document, even if it was not signed," say the Government spokesmen. These actions can be assumed to a large extent by the Government itself without the need for a modification of the decree law on drought validated by Parliament a few days ago.
The Government's meeting with the parties ran into disagreement on the date on which the sanctioning regime should be applied against non-compliant municipalities (ERC wanted July 1 and the PSC requested a one-year extension); but in the rest of the points there was a coincidence between the parties.
In the pre-agreement document – to which this newspaper has had access – the forecast of “enabling an extraordinary item of the budgets” of the Generalitat to deal with the drought was incorporated.
The text includes the Government's commitments to contribute 50 million euros to municipalities through a new line of subsidies from the Agència Catalana de l'Aigua, as well as the expansion of the existing budget from 25 to 40 million euros . This was a claim of the PSC, which demands "investments and not sanctions" for the municipalities. The intention is that the new line of subsidies will serve to improve the efficiency of the networks and sectorise, digitize and auscultate leaks.
The pre-agreement included the will to accelerate the works included in the current hydrological planning (such as the awarding of the Blanes desalination plant works in the first half of the year or the tender for the Cubelles desalination plant project) and the incorporation into this planning of two new water treatment plants in the lower section of the Besòs and the regeneration of water from the Sant Feliu de Llobregat treatment plant for reuse.
Also included are works involving an increase in drinking water treatment capacity (in the Sant Joan Despí and Abrera plants, in Llobregat, and in Cardedeu, for Ter flows), the increase in underground collections in the lower basin of Besòs or the extension of the biological treatment in the El Prat treatment plant to be able to push more reclaimed water upstream and make it drinkable in Sant Joan Despí.
Likewise, it is planned to expand the use of reclaimed water from the El Prat treatment plant in the industries of the Free Trade Zone or to do the same with the flows from the Sabadell treatment plant so that it can also be reused in Cerdanyola and Sant Cugat del Vallès.
In another chapter of the pre-agreement it was also agreed to "ask the Spanish Government for all possible financing to accelerate the actions described throughout the document and especially the arrival of European funds to finance the water cycle."
It was also agreed to "support the drafting of emergency and savings plans for municipalities with less than 20,000 inhabitants", which (unlike those with more than this number) can present their plans voluntarily.
Another novel point is that it is agreed that it is convenient to "publish the consumption" of water broken down by municipality (claimed by En Comú Podem), as well as the endowments per capita and their losses in the network, to guarantee public transparency and prioritize the improvement actions in the municipalities with the highest consumption.
It was also agreed to modify the special drought plan (from January 8, 2020) to allow municipal swimming pools to be filled for "public health reasons", as requested by the municipalities of the Arc Metropolità (second metropolitan ring). The special drought plan prohibits filling the pools in both the alert and exceptional (current) phases. The only exception is the partial filling of swimming pools that have a water recirculation system to replace flow losses due to evaporation and filter cleaning in order to guarantee the sanitary quality of the water. For this, the green light of the ACA will suffice.
