Àngel Simón, president of Agbar, told a revealing anecdote yesterday. Although he was raised in Barcelona, he was christened in the fortress castle of Sant Salvador, in Cercs (Berguedà), a municipality that was denied by the waters for the construction of the Baells reservoir, in the Llobregat. As a child, he accompanied his father to see the works on the Sau reservoir. Reviewing his biography we always look at the water.
Despite this, water management does not usually appear on the political agenda in Catalonia. It only emerges when the level of reservoirs drops dramatically and administrations are forced to organize possible domestic restrictions. And then they come in a hurry. But when it rains and the reservoirs fill up, no one remembers the issue. For this reason, the rogatives in La Moreneta seek above all to speed up and repeat this cyclical miracle, to be able to turn a page as soon as possible, to lose sight of the accursed drought.
But the drought always returns. And when it stops raining, worry and anxiety reappear with unusual force, as if everything were a new surprise. For this reason, the intervention of the president of Agbar, Ángel Simón, yesterday was precisely intended to be an antidote, an exercise in memory to prevent this persistent forgetting of water management from repeating itself, at a time when the reservoirs show a slight recovery, but they still do not reach 28% of their maximum capacity. This area of public management should always be on the table, as is energy or employment. In addition, the situation remains "critical", he warned, since 459 municipalities in the internal Catalan basins continue to be in a situation of exceptionality in the internal basins, which entails cuts in supply in several sectors to save domestic consumption.
Simón stated that "predictably, we will not have water cuts in the near future in the metropolitan area", but he demanded that the urgent works worth 105 million established by the water pact be activated. That is why the Generalitat hastened so that forgetfulness does not take over the scene again.
The water problem in the Barcelona region, in any case, is not solved because it accumulates a structural deficit (of 85 hm3a per year); and that is why we need "a plan" that is a definitive solution, so that we are not condemned to continue praying: a plan so that all these hardships "do not happen again".
With the history of the delays in the hydraulic works there would be material for a serial. Most of the infrastructures that have now been put on the table to deal with water deficits were already in the 2009-2015 hydrological planning (the Foix desalination plant, the expansion of the Blanes desalination plant or the use of more underground waters of the Besòs...).
All this was left up in the air in the so-called investment drought decade, a time of full reservoirs, marked by the obsession not to increase the debt of the Water Agency. Times of austerity prevented investments in new infrastructure, but the risk assumed has become excessively dangerous.
No more forgetting or delaying why climate change is so fierce. Summer rainfall has decreased in Catalonia by more than 5% per decade over the last 70 years and the rivers carry less water also because a thirsty and unmanaged forest area that retains water has expanded.
Simón once again vindicated that great metropolitan plan (valued at 1.3 billion euros) very focused on the idea of regenerating and reusing treated water, which has been revealed as a key factor in guaranteeing the supply in a definitive way in the future It is feasible to make use of 100% of the waste water, he emphasized, because once regenerated they acquire the condition of prepotable flows ("of better quality than those of rivers") and there is a health guarantee for using them.
Planning the use of water without depending on rainfall has become a priority. If the infrastructures had not been used to achieve these alternative flows (desalination and reuse), we would currently have restrictions in the metropolitan area. In the 23 municipalities served by this water company, 33% of the supply is guaranteed with desalination and 25% with reused water. "These 1.3 billion euros must be invested, even if there are no European funds; there are alternatives for financing", he said. If not, we will continue to be condemned to look at the reservoirs, to pray, to wait for the next drought.
