2024-01-10 16:23:01
BarcelonaIf there is no miracle, Barcelona will enter the drought emergency phase in the coming days. Like the rest of the country, the city has been preparing for this situation for some time and one of the key points in this first phase – the so-called emergency 1 – is how the watering of the trees and green areas of the city will be dealt with . The City Council assumes that the Government will attend to its request to allow it to irrigate with groundwater, the water from the city’s subsoil that the Catalan Water Agency (ACA) considers not potable, with the intention of ‘try to minimize the impact on the green of the city. At first, the Generalitat’s intention was to completely limit irrigation. “We cannot make water and nature compete. Letting the green die is also not the solution to get out of a climate change situation where the green is a mitigating factor”, defended this Wednesday the manager of Urban Services, Sonia cold
Irrigation is the council’s most urgent concern right now, as the latest data on daily drinking water consumption in the city momentarily removes the risk of water restrictions reaching citizens’ taps. According to municipal data, the month of November closed with an average consumption of 173 liters per day per citizen, a figure well below the current ceiling of 200 liters per day planned for phase 1 of the emergency. In fact, with this data, Barcelona residents could only see restrictions on drinking water from emergency phase 3, when the cap drops to 160 liters per inhabitant per day. A scenario that the City Council predicts would only occur in the worst case, that is to say in the event that it continues to rain less than usual until July.
In fact, the municipal government’s calculation is that if in the winter and spring it rains what is usual in the city for those dates, the emergency phase would be abandoned and it would return to the scenario of exceptionality. For this reason, Frias has stressed that they hope that the Catalan capital will never have to reach the point of having to carry out water cuts to homes, and has pointed out that, before that, other alternatives would be sought. For example, the reduction of water pressure or the arrival of water in ships.
Manual watering to save trees and parks
Faced with this scenario, the council presented this Wednesday the plan it has designed to “maximize irrigation with ground water” if it finally receives the green light from the Government and the drought emergency decree authorizes it. Currently, only 20% of the city is irrigated with groundwater, while the remaining 80% is irrigated with drinking water. When the city enters emergency phase 1, however, this 80% will automatically be left without irrigation, so the City Council has prepared a device to try to get groundwater to these areas as well. And how do you plan to do it? The proposal that has been worked on with Parks and Gardens calls for planning three work shifts – day, afternoon and night – with around 250 people to get this ground water to as many trees and parks as possible.
The mechanism would involve transporting tons of ground water to spaces where it does not reach automatically and using it for irrigation, either manually, with operators and hoses, or by connecting the tons to the parks’ automatic irrigation network. However, the City Council calculates that by stretching the current infrastructure to the maximum this would allow the use of around 0.87 cubic hectometres of water for irrigation, far from the 3 cubic hectometres of potable and ground water that are used in a normal scenario . We would be talking about a survival irrigation that will not prevent the parks from losing their splendor. In fact, there will be some green areas – still to be determined – where it may be impossible to reach with tons of water and which may directly run out of water beyond the rain that may fall.
To adapt to this limitation, the City Council will prioritize allocating water to the city’s street trees and palm trees – one of the trees that is suffering the most from water stress in the city -, as well as to the green spaces of the main streets and avenues and in the emblematic and historical parks of the city, such as the gardens of Costa and Llobera, those of the Teatre Grec, the Laberint d’Horta and the Roserar of Cervantes Park.
To expand the possibilities of using groundwater in the city, the City Council is already investing 14.4 million euros to expand the network. Among the actions planned, the 7 million euros to improve the Montjuïc system – which should allow all the greenery on the mountain to be irrigated with groundwater – and the connection of the Joan Miró and Glòries Park reservoirs through de Consell de Cent, which is budgeted at 3.5 million euros and which should make it possible to facilitate the irrigation of the entire Eixample with underground water. In addition, within the Endreça Plan there is also an investment of 12.2 million euros planned to improve the irrigation infrastructures in a dozen city parks.
Redirect the water from the shower to the toilet
In line with continuing to prepare to be able to deal with similar drought situations in the future with more guarantees, the City Council is also working on the preparation of a new gray water ordinance that expects to be able to start processing in the second semester of this year As explained by Frias, among the aspects that want to be regulated there is, for example, obliging all new constructions of buildings with more than eight homes and large renovations of buildings to create internal circuits that allow the water from the sink or shower can go into the toilet to be reused.
The context of drought has accentuated this, but it has been years since Barcelona has progressively reduced its drinking water consumption. Thus, it has gone from nearly 115 cubic hectometres per year in 1999, to the 91.5 hectometres with which it closed in 2022, 20% less. In terms of uses, 69% of the consumption of this water is domestic, 26% is used by commerce and industry – this would include consumption by tourism – and 5% is for municipal use and is used for green spaces, municipal buildings, ornamental fountains, cleaning services or the zoo, to name a few examples.
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