Barcelona City Council will stop watering the city's parks and gardens (specifically, lawns, grassy areas, meadows and annual plants) when the exceptional phase is activated in the current drought situation. It is another tangible consequence of the decline in reserves in the Barcelona region.
The Government decree that intensifies water restrictions prohibits watering gardens, public and private, with potable water. In the case of the Catalan capital, the problem is that 80% of the watering of parks and gardens is done precisely with drinking water and only the remaining 20% uses groundwater resources (groundwater); for this reason, the great sacrifice will be the green areas of the parks and gardens. The grass will not be watered.
However, in this situation, survival irrigation can be carried out (drop by drop or with groundwater), which will serve to save the trees and bush plantations.
The result of all this is that, if it does not rain this spring, the urban landscape is likely to change, as it will be led by the yellowing of dry grass and the withering of plants. The strategy of concentrating survival irrigation on trees and bush plantations is a rescue operation that seeks to avoid the definitive loss of specimens that have meant important investments to the council for years.
How does this measure affect citizens? They will be able to irrigate their gardens with water from the groundwater (if they have it) or to cover survival irrigation. And as for the plants on the balconies, they must also be watered "just enough for them to survive", say sources from the Agència de l'Aigua
However, the Barcelona City Council will maintain the tree and shrub planting program that was already programmed in the framework of some road actions and municipal works, which will mean placing the flower beds in the green axes of the Eixample (the Superilla Barcelona project) and complete the landscaping in other works in progress (Pí i Margall, Can Batlló or Clariana de Glòries...).
All these plantations will be irrigated with groundwater and are also saved to fulfill contracts already formalized with the companies and taking into account that they are plants that are waiting in nurseries.
"In any case, the new plantations that the City Council has been doing these years are already prepared to respond to drought situations," explained Eloi Badia, councilor for Climate Emergency.
Another effect of the lack of water is that the schedule for the replacement of plants and shrubs, which is usually done every season (spring and autumn) on a routine basis, will be delayed.
Irrigation of lawns is prohibited in all cases, except on surfaces intended for federated practice, or irrigation that is done by reusing rainwater collected from roofs or reclaimed water from the treatment plant.
In the current phase of drought, cleaning the streets, sewers, pavements and facades, both public and private, with potable water is prohibited, with some exceptions (for example, if it is due to an accident or fire, or if there is a risk sanitary or road).
However, the Barcelona City Council considers that the impact of the ban on using drinking water in urban cleaning will be very minor, since 80% of the flow used for this purpose comes from groundwater resources, and 20% from drinking water.
“In this case, that 20% of drinking water will be replaced by groundwater resources. In the case of street cleaning, the restrictions will hardly be noticeable" in the service, beyond the fact that there may be some mismatches when organizing logistics, adds Eloi Badia.
Likewise, other measures to deal with the drought that were already being applied will be maintained. Ornamental fountains may not be refilled (their spouts will be stopped) and swimming pools may not be refilled either, unless they have recirculation systems.
Badia indicated that the metropolitan area is now in better conditions to face the drought than in 2008, when the other major episode of lack of rain occurred. In the metropolitan area, 220 hm3 are now consumed per year, but half are contributions that did not exist 15 years ago: 53 hm3 of desalination and 56 hm3 of reclaimed water.
He also added that the people of Barcelona have made a significant effort to save, since in this time domestic consumption has gone from 113 liters per person per day to 106 liters (103, in the metropolitan area), compared to a consumption of about 140 liters in other large cities, such as Madrid.
In the same way, total consumption in the Catalan capital (considering all activities, industrial, commercial...) has gone from 170 to 153 liters per person per day.
And the total endowment (for all activities) that the Government now sets drops from 250 liters to 230 liters per person per day.
A total of 67 municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants had to submit drought emergency plans to the Government. However, 15 of them did not submit it and 13 submitted an insufficient document. Badalona, Cerdanyola, Molins de Rei, Cornellà y Viladecans, Banyoles, Calafell, Esparraguera, Figueres, Franqueses del Vallès, Olesa, Ripollet, Sant Feliu de Guíxols, Valls and El Vendrell have not presented it. They had a period of 6 months for this from the approval of the drought plan (January 8, 2020)
Minister Teresa Jordà recalled yesterday that the drought decree provides sanctions for municipalities that do not present emergency plans or those that present consumption allocations higher than what is stipulated (230 liters per person per day). The fines can reach 10,000 euros (in the first case) and up to 50,000 euros, if there is repetition, in the second.
Councilor Eloi Badia admitted that the fact that these municipalities do not have an emergency plan against the drought "is worrisome", although, referring to the metropolitan municipalities, he specified: "the fact that they do not have a plan does not mean that they do it badly, but that They haven't expressed it, and they haven't put black and white on what they're doing." Badia, as vice president of Ecology of the Metropolitan Area, has obtained guarantees from three of these municipalities that they will present the plan.
