The expansion works of the Tordera desalination plant in Blanes, which will make it the largest installation of its kind in Catalonia, will be financed with a loan from the central government. With a budget of 220 million euros, the investment in the Tordera II desalination plant will be paid for with loans from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR). The loan will have to be returned by the Generalitat since this type of hydraulic works are subject to "the principle of cost recovery", so there will be a tariff repercussion and they will end up being paid by the users.
The new Tordera desalination plant in Blanes (like the Cubelles/Foix desalination plant) will be financed by the Central Administration, but it will not be through lost subsidies but through a loan within the aforementioned PRTR. This will mean that the Catalan Administration will have to return the credit to the State, although it will not be with resources allocated to the Generalitat's ordinary budgets, but will be returned with the income obtained through the water receipt.
"These funds of the Recovery plan are subject to the European principle of cost recovery, so the users" of the water service will pay, explains Hugo Morán, Secretary of State for the Environment of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition .
It is a work that would be paid, therefore, through the tariff route. Nuance is important. It is one thing that it is paid by the State budgets or the budgets of the Generalitat with own resources in the strict sense (taxes) and another that in the end it is paid by the users. In any case, these funds would be returned in 30 years and the loan would be granted "under very favorable conditions" and with a repercussion on the receipt of water that would not be significant, says Morán. "These are credits that are obtained under very advantageous conditions", emphasizes the Secretary of State.
The budgets of the Generalitat for 2023 reserved for this desalination plant an item of 165 million euros, and since the financing now comes from the central administration, it is necessary to ask what the destination of these remaining resources would be released
Spokespeople for the Department of Climate Action rejected this newspaper's request to clarify all these points related to the financing of the desalination plant.
The experts consulted indicate that the repayment of this credit could be made by integrating the costs of this new desalination plant into those already assumed by the public company of the Generalitat ATL (adding them to those of the other hydraulics operated by this company of the Generalitat, like those of the Tordera desalination plant).
ATL is the major water supplier in 110 municipalities in the Barcelona and Girona region. The cost of the investment and the repayment of credit will make the sale of water more expensive to the municipalities and companies and these in turn will pass it on to the subscribers through tariffs. "In the end, in any case, the citizen always ends up paying, either with taxes or with the water bill", says a person familiar with this management.
However, decisions on how to pay for hydraulic works in periods of emergency can become highly relevant, given the experience of previous droughts. The water crisis suffered by the Barcelona region is due (apart from the 38 months without rain) to the lack of investment in a decade, to the investment drought by the Generalitat (2009-2017) and to the fact that already planned equipment (such as the Tordera II and Cubelles/Foix desalination plants), which would now be crucial, were unprogrammed. After the previous drought - during the period 2009-2017 -, the ordinary budgets of the Generalitat barely included contributions and it was decided that the Catalan Water Agency (ACA) would take on debt with the canon that pay at the water receipt. Afterwards, the debt was so great that the priority became the repayment of the loan, so that works that are now essential were deprogrammed. The Government has, however, promised to allocate up to 120 million euros in aid to councils to improve the efficiency of their network. The new Tordera desalination plant has suffered continuous delays. It was included in the first hydrological planning cycle of the Generalitat (2009-2015), but the works were not executed and it was also included in the second cycle (2016-2021), although the expectation arose along the way that it was declared to be of general interest and that it was paid by the Central Administration. The ups and downs have continued in the current phase, since since the Central Government decided to finance the work (April 2023) the long transition to constitute the new Executive and the need to coordinate with the Generalitat have caused more uncertainties and delays, without the date now being clear to put the project out to tender. "The Government already put 165 million for this infrastructure in its budget. If the funding offered by the ministry does not suit him, let him do it with his budgets. But let them bid for the work already!” says the deputy of the PSC Silvia Paneque.
