Drought comes at a price. And the extra effort to obtain dwindling water resources will also be felt in the pocket. The Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona has started preparations to update the rate of water supply to the municipalities supplied by this entity. The matter will be debated by the metropolitan groups and could be adopted in the next plenum before coming into force at the beginning of the year.
The update of tariffs will be the consequence of the increase in the costs of water treatment at the facilities of the public supplier company of the Generalitat Aigües Ter-Llobregat (ATL), owner of the two desalination plants (El Prat and Blanes) and the water treatment plants of Abrera (Llobregat) and Cardedeu (Ter).
These facilities are, together with the Sant Joan Despí water treatment plant, from Aigües de Barcelona, the big taps that supply the flow to the metropolitan area. "We have to update the water tariff because objectively the prices of water collection related to energy, among other factors, have risen", say sources from the Metropolitan Area.
Precisely, the public company that supplies high water ATL is planning to approve today the update of the water sales rates to the 116 customers (municipalities) in the Barcelona region, among which, the AMB. Then, he will communicate it to the town councils.
The ATL water tariff will increase by approximately 30%, according to the proposal communicated, although the same sources indicated that the final impact on the receipt paid by the citizen is to be determined. It is still a question to be defined, since other fees and concepts are attached to the water receipt (water fee, waste treatment fee and others).
Sources in the Metropolitan Area stressed that this increase (of 30%) is apparently "deceptive", they added, since the important thing is "the translation to an absolute monetary value", which makes the figure cover another dimension The ATL rate update means 1 euro or 1.5 euros per person per month, about 4 euros per month per family unit.
The increases in water costs for the Barcelona area are due to an update of the CPI, as the ATL had not updated its rates since 2017. However, the key factor is the high cost of electricity and the review of electricity rates that the supplier company has had, a burden that has a decisive impact on the operating costs of the desalination plants, which have had to operate at full capacity continued by lasequera.
Currently, 33% of the resources supplied to the 23 municipalities served by Aigües de Barcelona come from the El Prat desalination plant. While the water from the Ter River, which transports the artery from Cardedeu to Barcelona, descends due to gravity, the desalination plants involve a high consumption of energy.
In addition, there have been increases in personnel and operating costs, including reagents, necessary to treat scarcer water and in which potableization processes must be extreme. To improve this supply, the ATL has had to optimize the treatments of the Ter water treatment plant (in Cardedeu), where the installation of new activated carbon filters and the construction of a new disinfection facility for ozonation, among other elements.
The update of the metropolitan water tariff is also the result of the need to undertake until 2030 various investment works in the metropolitan area, new hydraulic works infrastructures and tasks of "modernization and regeneration" of the infrastructures in service. The future update of metropolitan rates will have to take into account the price revision approaches presented by the company Aigües de Barcelona, which manages the service in 23 municipalities.
In addition, the metropolitan area must be provided with new water resources to be able to comply with the agreement that obliges it to reduce water abstraction from the Ter, after the pact that foresees gradually decreasing the transfer of this river towards in Barcelona.
This issue has been present in the talks held by the executive management of the Metropolitan Area and the Ministry of Climate Action, which have sought to reach a double consensus: on the ATL rate and on updating the metropolitan water rate.
The fact that the four major political groups are part of the metropolitan government is a factor that would allow the agreement to be flattened. The different groups of the metropolitan government (PSC, communes, Junts and ERC) have been informed of the intention of the PSC (majority formation and which also leads the water management area), despite the fact that the proposals have not been formulated in writing Spokespersons of these groups hope to know the details very soon, although it cannot be ruled out that the commons will stand out or express their disagreement.
