The Government postpones aid to fix water pipes on the eve of drought restrictions

The Catalan Water Agency (ACA) has postponed for five months the distribution of the aid that the municipalities have requested to modernize and, above all, repair their water supply networks. The entity officially announced it on December 22, just before the Government decreed the level of emergency due to the drought and, with it, a considerable increase in restrictions on water consumption. The ACA alleges its inability to manage the “more than 700 applications” received, a number of requests 60% higher than for other previous aid. The problem is that the poor condition of some networks causes 25% of the water that runs through them to be lost.

The Generalitat had contemplated in different lines allocating 50 million euros in aid to basically solve the problems of water leaks that the water pipes of many municipalities have, but also digitalization to improve control of the network. It opened the window to present these projects in July and closed it at the end of September. Socialist deputy Sílvia Paneque revealed that the Climate Action advisor, David Mascort, explained in a meeting with the different parliamentary groups that the requests had completely exceeded the ACA's forecasts and the capacity of its staff. At that meeting he even stated that the applications also exceeded the total amount assigned to the call, which will end up being a source of problems, since since the distribution is handled by competitive competition, the first projects registered in the ACA will be the first to be analyzed and being awarded the subsidy.

The aid that the ACA is working on was the result of the political agreement last March, when the Government was preparing an anti-drought decree in the face of the complex panorama that Catalonia faced after 30 months with hardly any rain. Instead of approaching the opposition parties, the Executive of Pere Aragonès was recriminated by Junts and the PSC, who accused him that his policy consisted more of fines for municipalities that did not comply with the minimum water consumption by inhabitants who aid for control of supplies.

As a result of that confrontation, which also coincided with the proximity of the municipal elections, the Department of Climate Change changed the third and assumed a proposal that the ACA took reluctantly. The Water Agency's argument to oppose is that its competence is the management of the upper water network, that which exists upstream of the municipal tanks. The low network is the responsibility of municipal entities and water companies such as Agbar, which serve water to homes and businesses and where the major problems of water leaks occur, the repair of which is often more expensive. than the municipal budget itself.

On the other hand, doubts about the speed of the interested municipalities in presenting projects in a timely manner have proven unfounded. More than half of the Catalan town councils (private operators could not present projects) have responded to the call, aware of the historic opportunity: municipalities with less than 1,000 inhabitants can receive subsidies for the entire cost of the works, while from there the percentage of aid is reduced to the maximum 60% for municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants. In campaigns to fix leaks and carry out other repairs, the maximum aid is 150,000 euros.

Water leak in Badalona

The great example of a problem in the supply network is found in Badalona, ​​in the Canyet neighborhood, where two liters of water have been lost per second for almost two decades. But this fault, very expensive and complex to repair, does not fall within the assumptions of the ACA aid line because it depends on Aguas Ter-Llobregat and, therefore, is part of the high-speed network.

The Government already assumes that it is a matter of a short time before entering the emergency phase. The swamps of the internal basin are at 16.7% of capacity and the rains that may arrive in the coming days will barely stop the measure. Once these fall below 16%, new restrictions will be activated, such as lower water consumption forced by a drop in pressure in the pipes of Catalan cities. To try to delay the measure as much as possible, last December the Government improvised an intermediate step, the pre-emergency, which means that each inhabitant cannot exceed 210 liters of daily consumption. With the new phase, this limit is lowered by 200 liters, a situation in which 24 municipalities in Alt Empordà and Baix Camp already find themselves.

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