Barcelona is the first major city in southern Europe to face a situation of extreme drought and the water restrictions that come with it.
The city has 1.6 million inhabitants;
three million if the 35 neighboring municipalities that make up the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB) are added.
In recent years there have been episodes of severe drought and restrictions in other areas of the continent, such as France and Italy, but they have affected smaller populations than the Barcelona conurbation.
Here, the drought emergency prevents parks from being irrigated with tap water and the actions will be minimal, with subsoil water, not potable, that will be transported with tanks.
In addition, 25% of the showers in sports centers have been closed and the ornamental fountains are dry.
If it does not rain, in July the restrictions will reach homes, where water pressure will be reduced.
In the short term, the Government is considering bringing boats with water from Valencia.
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Catalonia enters emergency due to the worst drought ever recorded
But the Catalan capital and its area do not have a bad starting situation and they have done their homework.
Water consumption is reasonable: 170 liters per person per day on average, a calculation that includes domestic spending, but also that of public services, industry or agriculture.
Furthermore, Barcelona has alternative water sources to reservoirs, such as large aquifers, and has invested in pioneering systems for using rainwater, with tanks, collectors and draining pavements.
With a domestic consumption of 104 liters per day per person, the city is also supplied by the desalination plants built after the great drought of 2008 and, in the last year, the regenerated water (which comes out of treatment plants, is treated, and is discharged to rivers or aquifers and then capture it and make it drinkable).
But with climate change accelerating and the prospect of more severe droughts, all of this together will not be enough.
The solution lies in new water production and recycling infrastructure: desalination plants, water regeneration stations from purification plants and water treatment plants.
An expensive remedy, with environmental costs and questioned by organizations that are committed to a structural change in the model.
But that has been the recipe for large urban conurbations affected by drought in other parts of the world.
The pioneer country is Israel, which began building infrastructure in the 70s of the last century to produce and recycle water.
California (United States) and Singapore, in Southeast Asia, are also turning to desalination plants and regeneration.
And extreme was the case of Cape Town (South Africa), which in 2018 was on the verge of running out of water, to the point of having an action plan for what it called “Day Zero.”
The water purification plant in Sant Joan Despí de Aigües in Barcelona, which treats water from the Llobregat River, on Friday. Massimiliano Minocri
Only half of the water comes from the reservoirs
In a normal situation, Barcelona and its area, which are part of the network of the Ter and Llobregat rivers, were supplied 80% with water from reservoirs.
With the drought, today the swamps only provide half of the water, and the rest comes from the subsoil, the two active desalination plants, 24 water regeneration stations (a system that has barely been in use for a year) and three water treatment plants, details the Catalan Water Agency (ACA) of the Generalitat.
In 2022, the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, the competent body in matters of supply, approved a
Comprehensive Cycle Strategic Plan
(the PECIA) with a view to 2050 that proposes building new infrastructures to guarantee the availability of water.
It plans a water treatment plant and a water regeneration station on the Besòs river, one of the two that flank the city and where investment was not made at the time because it was an open-air sewer, now recovered.
The other river in Barcelona is the Llobregat, which already has these infrastructures.
The metropolitan plan also suggests a battery of savings measures, improvement of existing facilities and renewal of the network.
Water deficit and need to produce water
The AMB document indicates that Barcelona and its surroundings have 803 cubic hectometers of water per year, while the demand is almost 400. But it warns that climate change will reduce surface resources and the internal basins of the Ter rivers by 12%. and Llobregat, and 9% underground resources, while demand for agricultural and population uses will increase, due to pending urban plans.
Without the planned actions, the document indicates that in 2050 the drinking water deficit would be 11 cubic hectometers, which could reach 43 hectometers in a drought situation.
Sources from the AMB itself admit that “the outlook” is worse than that described in the Plan, because climate change and drought have accelerated.
Regarding the construction of new infrastructures to take advantage of seawater or recycle water from treatment plants, on a scale throughout Catalonia, the Minister of Climate Action of the Generalitat, David Mascort, celebrated in December during the COP28 held in Dubai: “In four years we will be able to reuse the same volume of water that Barcelona needs to supply itself for a year.”
Mascort recalled that Catalonia has 24 treated water regeneration stations, an amount that they want to double.
And a third planned desalination plant.
The wastewater treatment plant next to the Besòs river, near the municipality of Montcada i Reixac. Massimiliano Minocri
From the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, the professor of hydrogeology at the School of Civil Engineering, Xavier Sánchez Vila, summarizes that “in the future” we will have to “increase regenerated water and have desalination plants for emergencies, as now, but in parallel consider what country we want, because any project or activity involves spending water, and everything has costs and benefits.”
The campaign
D'on no n'hi ha no en raja
(it could be translated as something similar to Where there is not, it cannot be taken) of social, territorial and environmental entities, has demanded a few days ago a structural change in the water management model.
They denounce "the opacity regarding consumption, laxity with large consumers of water and serious impacts on rivers" and consider it negative to "continue promoting an economic model based on the increase in tourism and the export of meat and fruit, which dries and contaminates the available bodies of water.
A new ordinance to take advantage of gray water
At Barcelona City Council, the project director of the municipal company Barcelona Ciclo del Agua (BCASA), Alejandro Ortiz, details the drought plan that contemplates alternative water resources at the city level.
Making more use of the large underground pocket, which is not drinkable but is used for irrigation or urban cleaning, is one of the main objectives: on the one hand, connecting it with the entire city and, on the other, regenerating the Besòs reservoir and increasing upstream flows. .
But the city is also building a double network in the new neighborhood of La Marina, with drinking water and regenerated water for toilet cisterns and irrigation.
And it is drafting a new gray water ordinance to reuse non-fecal domestic water to fill cisterns, a regulation that is intended to be applied in new construction buildings or large renovations.
And another project in the pipeline is to capture seawater for ornamental fountains or for hot and cold plants.
Last November, the C40 network, which brings together a hundred cities against climate change, published a statement entitled
Water Save Crisis
, in view of situations of serious droughts or floods, which is a call to increase the resilience of cities and above all protect the most vulnerable population.
“We know that climate change increases extreme weather episodes, with droughts, floods and heat waves, which are present in 90% of global disasters,” explains the network's European director, Julia López.
The declaration proposes establishing alert systems, response plans that guarantee basic needs and access to drinking water.
And he urges cities to “collaborate with the private sector and organizations.”
Marc Montlleó, biologist and professor in the master's degree in Urban and Territorial Development at the UPC and in the City and Urbanism program at the UOC, who participated in the drafting of the strategic plan, regrets that “it is invested due to a crisis”, but that, At the same time, “we have been able to endure the last three years thanks to those investments.”
He warns that “the next drought will be sooner rather than later and harder.”
And finally he offers a reflection: “We can be more efficient, take advantage of the groundwater, not lose a drop, build desalination plants... and with time and money give water to the population.
But the problem, the biggest victims of climate change are the natural environment: agriculture, livestock, forests, aquifers and rivers.
In short, ecosystems will be the most affected in the long run by the climate crisis.”
Israel, Singapore, California or Cape Town: territories and cities that have faced major droughts
Israel, where every drop is used twice.
With very few water resources added to climate change, Israel was a pioneer in the use of desalination plants (the first was from the 70s of the last century) and water regeneration plants.
85% of desalinated water is used for homes and 90% of reused water is used in agriculture.
Experts sum it up like this: “Every drop of water is used twice.”
Singapore imports water.
Singapore, in Southeast Asia and with almost six million inhabitants, has also suffered major droughts during this century (the last in 2019) and is resorting to importing (from Malaysia, with a contract until 2060), desalination, regenerating water used (it has five regenerated plants for non-human uses) and collect storm water with reservoirs.
California turns to desalination plants.
California, another point of frequent and severe droughts, has turned primarily to desalination plants to combat them.
Future projects generate rejection due to their high economic and environmental cost (due to the damage caused by returning brine to the sea).
There are also regenerative plants and part of this water is subjected to “indirect potable reuse”, by pouring it into aquifers from where it is extracted again and treated to distribute it for human consumption.
The "day zero" that did not reach Cape Town.
The drought that began in 2015, combined with leaks in the network, caused a serious water shortage in Cape Town (South Africa) in 2018. Despite warnings about climate change, the lack of investment in alternative infrastructure plants to reservoirs In 2018, they led the city to announce plans for Day Zero, when it would run out of water.
The restrictions prior to that day, which ultimately did not arrive, led to reducing consumption by a third.
And investments have been promoted to extract water from underground aquifers.
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