The Government will allow public or collective swimming pools (municipal or private community) to be filled. It will thus lift this veto included in the special drought plan for the current phase of exceptionality. The Catalan Executive has decided to make this water-saving measure more flexible, given the negative effects that the impossibility of filling communal swimming pools would entail. However, the ban on filling privately owned swimming pools remains.
The Catalan Executive will modify the special drought plan, so that in a month's time the pools for collective use that are now empty can be filled. The spokeswoman, Patrícia Plaja, argued that the measure is adopted for "public health reasons" in the "hotter" months, when these facilities act as climate shelters. The Government has commissioned a report to determine specifically which municipal and community or similar swimming pools may be subject to this consideration.
In the current phase of exceptionality, the application of the drought plan will not lead to any practical problems for users of swimming pools that are full. They can be partially filled if they have a recirculation circuit (almost all of them have one) to replenish the essential quantities of water that are lost due to evaporation and filter cleaning or to guarantee the sanitary quality of the water.
The problem was the empty pools because in the winter they were renovated until the vessel was empty, and now they found that, when the hot months begin, they could not be filled (due to the exceptional situation). "Making it impossible to fill swimming pools would have a huge impact", highlights Agustí Ferrer, managing director of the Spanish Association of Pool Sector Professionals (Asofap), which requested this exception, as did the municipalities of the Metropolitan Arc. Users of municipal swimming pools, sports centers and housing estates with swimming pools will be able to benefit.
The Government's amendment may therefore favor economic sectors such as hotels, gyms or campsites, Plaja recalled. "But we must not lose sight of the fact that water is a scarce resource and that the priority is to secure it for human consumption and economic uses", he stressed. The spokeswoman urged the "shared responsibility" of all to comply with the regulations and pointed out that the municipalities have an important role to play here.
Currently, the region of Barcelona and Girona is in an exceptional situation. If the situation does not change, an emergency could be declared in September. But, even so, "it has been considered that it was good and necessary that during the summer months the use and filling of community swimming pools is not restricted".
On the other hand, if the emergency phase were to be reached, the special drought plan totally prohibits the total or partial filling of swimming pools. "We touch the ground with our feet. If there is an emergency, we will not ask according to what", says Ferrer, according to which the maintenance sector would assume that in this case it must accept a total saving of water. How much water can a swimming pool lose at the end of the season if the flow is not restored when it enters an emergency? Ferrer points out that "it depends on the heat and the use that people make of it, who enter and leave it wet"; but he estimates it could be between 10% and 20%.
The Executive Council has also announced that a new budget item of 90 million euros has been made available for urgent works to help alleviate the effects of the drought. The money was planned under the heading of special measures. Of this sum, 50 million are so that the municipalities can promote works that improve the municipal water supply, and 40 million euros (which were initially 15 million) are specific aid lines for the distribution and improvement of the water
