The paradigm of the Valencian Community: asks for water and “exports” water

The political history of the Valencian Community is full of water demands. First, the transfer of the Ebro and then that of the Tagus, which is still in force and which is intended to satisfy the needs of irrigators in the south of the territory. However, the Valencian Community can also become an exporter of water, if the Government's decision to transfer it by boat from the Sagunto desalination plant (Valencia) to Barcelona is carried out.

Spain has nearly 800 desalination plants, according to data from the Spanish Association of Desalination and Reuse, AEDyR. The Valencian Community has the largest in Spain, in Torrevieja, with a production capacity of 80 cubic hectometers of water per year (the city of Barcelona consumes 91.5 and the city of Valencia about 45) and which could not start at full capacity. due to power supply capacity problems. The Valencian Community is, in addition, the autonomy that has the greatest desalination capacity, according to data from the same association. At full capacity, counting only on the large infrastructures dedicated to seawater desalination, these have more than double the capacity of those installed in Catalonia (94 compared to 200 cubic hectometers) and 80% more than the large desalination plants in Andalusia, according to the same sources.

But desalinated water is the last resort, especially in times of drought and when resources are scarce on the surface or in aquifers. It is expensive and some farmers don't want it. Thus, the difference between capacity and production in these infrastructures is very high, that is, they are underused. According to data from the state public company Acuamed, which has five desalination plants in its network in the Valencian territory, during the past year and until the month of April, they produced, on average, just over 3% of their capacity. Is not always that way. In 2015 and 2016, the Mutxamel plant made it possible to overcome a severe drought and avoided supply problems to the south of Alicante. And the one in Torrevieja produced 80% of its capacity in 2022.

The largest desalination plants built in Alicante, Valencia and Castellón come from the AGUA program that José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero approved in 2004 in response to the repeal of the Ebro transfer. And, as Jaime Lora, professor at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, explains, “the demands “They overestimated themselves.”

Those were the years of the real estate boom. Dozens of Valencian municipalities approved urban developments that included golf courses, hotels and residential areas. This was the case of the Marina d'Or Golf project, a macro-development on an area of ​​more than 18 million square meters, between Oropesa del Mar and Cabanes, which planned the construction of three golf courses, seven hotels and more than 30,000 homes, which meant an estimated population of 94,000 people compared to the little more than 10,000 natives that the two towns combined.

In Moncofa, with barely 5,000 inhabitants, a project was approved with an 18-hole golf course, a hotel area with 800 beds, a residential area and, adjacent to it, two thermal water establishments and more hotels.

In neither of the two municipalities were there sufficient water resources. The municipalities also did not force the developers to present a plan to carry them out. The Valencian PP was always against the use of desalination plants but the mayors ended up demanding their construction as the only way out of urban expansion. “The city councils saw in the desalination plants the solution to a formidable urban and industrial expansion and did not hesitate to promote their construction,” summarize both Lora and the UPV professor Enrique Cabrera. The 2008 crisis arrived and neither of the two large projects were executed, but the desalination plants were installed.

Something similar happened in Sagunto, the town from which, if necessary, water will come to Barcelona. The need for a desalination plant arose from the projection of an industrial park for which, at the time, a successful, immediate and indisputable future was imagined. The infrastructure was compromised the year before the crisis broke out. The initial nearly 20 million that it was going to cost became 38. Currently, the industrial park is not yet developed although its future is more certain since the battery gigafactory that the Volkswagen group is building in the municipality was announced last year. and who will become your main client.

Even so, the existence of desalination plants is basic and guarantees, according to both Enrique Cabrera, who chaired the International Water Association (IWA), and Jaime Lora, who has studied desalination since the early 1980s. “ It is the only water insurance,” they say. Both defend that desalination plants should not operate at 100% because they are the last resort and that they must be sized. “There are fewer and fewer natural resources and desalination plants are going to become a strategic resource,” says Lora, who maintains “integrated planning with the entire water distribution network” as a priority and explains the case of Mutxamel in which They designed the necessary infrastructure to, for example, provide service to Benidorm or use the reservoir that is between both towns to, in case of emergency, supply desalinated water to it and, from there, transfer it to Benidorm. “In Spain it is not done but in other places they do fill aquifers with desalinated water,” he explains. Cabrera raises another problem such as the state of the network. “When we talk about cuts and pressure drops, it is because there are leaks and there is room for improvement,” he points out.

Both admit that the price of desalinated water is a handicap, above all, due to the high energy consumption they require but which, they claim, has been reduced by the improvements introduced in the systems. They do not forget the impact on the marine environment, a consequence of the return of the brine, although they consider that it is an inconvenience that “seems to be overcome” with environmental impact assessments and the controlled dilution of the spilled brine. “If the desalination plant is essential, no one disputes it,” they say. Jaime Lora insists: “They are insurance to have water, more expensive but necessary.” And he adds: “The paradox is that we do not question bottled water, which is worth a thousand times more than desalinated water.”

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