La Cambra considers the “desalination and reuse” policy against drought insufficient

The Generalitat basically has three strategies to fight new episodes of drought like the one that this Thursday forced it to activate phase 1 of emergency.

Reduction of consumption, desalination of sea water and reuse of water resources that come out of the treatment plants.

The Barcelona Chamber of Commerce questions this strategy and warns the Government of Pere Aragonès to also bet on the interconnection of the Ebro River with the Ter-Llobregat system, which supplies six of the eight million inhabitants of Catalonia.

It is not the first institution to call for this pipeline.

In December, four engineering colleges already did so.

And yesterday the Government's response was the same as then: No.

The president of the Chamber, Josep Santacreu, warned that with climate change Catalonia is heading towards a structural water problem and warned that, although the origin is in global warming, Catalonia's problem is the accumulation "of a very clear deficit of decisions and a delay of more than a decade”, in reference to the warning that the great drought that began in 2007 already left in Catalan lands. And he considers that the new measures that the Department of Climate Action is betting on will not meet the needs of Catalonia: “The strategy focused on desalination plants and water reuse is good but it is not enough,” said Santacreu, who called for modernizing the industrial and agricultural model and asked for an interconnection that would allow connecting the Ebro with the great metropolitan region of Barcelona.

Asked about it, he avoided talking about transfer, whose decision he left for later moments.

The feeling expressed by the engineers is that the interconnection would make it possible to take advantage of the water surpluses of each water system in both directions.

The reality is that now the Ebro River shows a vigorous flow while the reservoirs in the internal basins of Catalonia show the cracked soil typical of long periods of time without precipitation.

“If the balance between the cost of the investment and the benefits is positive, I think it is more justified at a time as critical as this,” defended the president of the Chamber of Commerce, complaining about the delay in decision-making: “ We wouldn't have to go to these extreme measures to make decisions.

Santacreu assumed that even the Chamber is late to the debate and that a commission will prepare a monograph on the topic.

Its head of the studies department, Joan Ramon Rovira, admitted that the effects of the drought, especially due to its impact on agriculture and the food industry, will impact the economic activity of Catalonia, whose GDP the entity expects to grow this year by 1.8%.

The Generalitat has set the objective of generating 182 cubic hectometers of water for consumption with its measures: 80 hm³ from desalination;

56 hm³ from reuse and improvements in water treatment plants;

6.3 hm³ in network efficiency improvements, 15 hm³ in well recovery and 25 hm³ to intensify the use of the Besòs River.

In parallel, it is planned to go from the current 24 water regeneration facilities to 40. 120 hm³ will be recovered through regeneration, 50 hm³ more than now.

The Generalitat estimates that one million cubic hectometers is the daily consumption of 7.5 million inhabitants.

Yesterday the reservoirs had only 109.41 cubic hectometers, 15.75% of their capacity and below the 16% that required declaring the emergency.

Pimec, the association of small and medium-sized businesses, responded to the entry into emergency in Barcelona and Girona with the request for aid for companies affected by the emergency measures, fearing that these will cause “business closures, destruction of jobs and loss of the ability to create wealth.”

The companies most affected by the drought are in the agricultural and livestock sectors, some industrial sectors such as agri-food, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, paper and textiles, and some business services such as industrial laundries and aquatic activities.

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