A ship loaded with drinking water is seen docked in the northern Spanish port of Barcelona as part of an unprecedented emergency plan to alleviate a drought in the city. The ship was carrying some 5.3 million gallons of water, roughly enough to satisfy a day's requirements for 180,000 people. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
Barcelona floats creative solution to water crisis
This week, it began importing potable water by ship as part of a broader effort to meet needs. Its reservoirs are down to 20 percent capacity.
By Lisa Abend | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor / May 15, 2008 edition
Reporter Lisa Abend talks about Spain's struggles with Barcelona's water shortage.
Reporter Lisa Abend
Madrid
With Spain’s average rainfall down 40 percent last year, many cities have restricted residents from filling their swimming pools or watering their lawns. But perhaps no municipality has developed such diverse and creative solutions as hard-hit Barcelona, which this week began a €44 million ($68 million) operation to bring in drinking water by ship.
On Tuesday, the first vessel – from the southern city of Tarragona – arrived in Barcelona’s port, where firemen discharged the ship’s 20 tanks into a pipeline linked to the city’s water distribution network. The next day, Barcelona residents were drinking Tarragona water from their taps.
The measure is designed to stave off a water crisis that has been building for some time and has reduced Barcelona’s reservoirs to 20 percent of their capacity.
“For the past four years, we’ve had a shortage of rain,” says Narcis Prat, a water expert at the University of Barcelona. “Now we have a shortage of water. Without significant rain, we only have enough to last until December.”
Professor Prat points out that the population of Spain’s second-largest city has grown by more than 1.5 million in the past 15 years, stretching limited resources further. That means the citizens’ “excellent” conservation habits aren’t enough, says Barcelona’s mayor, Jordi Hereu.
“The area of Barcelona is exemplary in its consumption,” he says. “But we’re talking about 5.5 million people…. And all of them have a right to water.”
The water boats are the most immediate solution, which will allow the city to forgo rationing over the summer. Ten ships will bring an estimated 2.6 cubic hectometers of water to the city each month for the next six months. Most of it will be bought from Tarragona and Marseilles, though some will also come from a desalination plant in southern Spain.
The city has entertained other ideas, too. Some have been discarded, such as importing water by train (too expensive) or diverting it from the Rhone (too lengthy a process).
Other measures, such as recycling water, are still in the works, though none offers a perfect solution. Newly dug wells have angered local farmers, who argue that they salinate native aquifers. A desalination plant, slated for completion in 2009, which will convert Barcelona’s seawater to fresh, has provoked the ire of environmentalists and raised concerns about other resources.
“Desalination plants require a lot of energy to run,” says Joan Armengol, professor of ecology at the University of Barcelona. “And just as we have a shortage of water, we have a shortage of energy in Spain.”
No measure has been more controversial than a pipeline to divert water from the Ebro River to Barcelona. In addition to concerns about compromising other areas’ water supplies, it has provoked charges of political favoritism, since the Socialist federal government approved the pipeline for Barcelona, which is also controlled by Socialists, but overturned plans for a similar pipeline to Valencia and Murcia, two thirsty areas run by the opposition Popular Party.
The debate over the pipeline, which should be completed in October, has become so fierce that it’s been dubbed the “water wars.”
But even cooler heads see problems with it. “What we need is something that isn’t just one-way. What we need is a whole network that guarantees supply … so that water can circulate throughout the region,” says Professor Armengol.
Local officials and the regional water authority argue that the multiple efforts will guarantee supplies in both the short and long term.
“We’re exploring all preventive options so that we can guarantee water supplies now and in the future,” says mayor Hereu. “Water is a fundamental right, and the government has to protect it.”
But some critics worry that the government is missing the most effective solution.
“In California, where they have a lot of experience with water shortages, a city like Los Angeles can negotiate for water with a place like the Imperial Valley that has greater supply. They create a water bank,” says Prat. “Here, we don’t have these global solutions.
“Our government may be Socialist, but when it comes to water policy, Schwarzenegger is far more progressive.”
Comments
2. sophie jensen | 05.16.08
“The ship was carrying some 5.3 million gallons of water, roughly enough to satisfy a day’s requirements for 180,000 people.”
that doesn’t sound like much of a solution for a city of 5.5 million people. how on earth can they justify not rationing?
the Spanish officials seem to be working with some faulty information. California’s Imperial Valley is a desert, which became an agricultural area because of water imported from the Colorado River. And the Colorado River is drying up. Arnold Schwarzenegger had nothing to do with the 1957 California Water Plan which enabled imports from the Colorado. he was a 10-year-old in Austria at the time.
3. Mark Smith | 05.16.08
I lived in Barcelona for two years, and not once did I drink water from the tap. We just bought it in jugs at the store and carried it home. Everyone did.
4. Barrie Harrop | 05.17.08
Windesal can solve the fresh water issue in Barcelona and othe places.
There has been much talk about climate change, but not much about where we will see its first impact.
Flooding ,Drought, water is the vector of climate change, we already have seen in recent times in many areas of Worldwide areas where there is intense competition for water, Windesal® can sustain many areas Worldwide that will be impacted by this issue, that may suffer physically or economically from this lack of fresh water shortage.
Windesal® can deal efficiently in way to lead the greatest single issue of the 21st Century: Sustainability.
5. Venkat Karimanasseri | 05.18.08
I grew up in the southern city of Madras now Chennai, in India - Chennai faces a perennial water shortage despite having some good rainfall and a set of good rivers in the neighbouring states.
What I found lacking in Chennai in Tamil Nadu, India is the political will and statesman like leadership required to engage in nation-building, starting from bottoms-up, not top-down ! Decades ago in the mid 1900s, we still had politicians of all hues caring about people’s needs and welfare, needs of a future generation in their country and its place and dignity in the comity of nations. Alas, that generation is now a rare breed in politics the world over…today it is the day of the petty merchant who is hand-in-glove with the rule-makers masquerading as policy makers for a free world !!
Water problems are simple to solve everywhere - we have enough water for everyone’s needs, but not enough for everyone’s wants !
1. Edwin Neal Lehnert | 05.16.08
Free solution idea. How about the use of iceberg water an an answer to water shortages any where in the world. Massive icebergs are drifting from the Antarctic with the help of centrifugal force of gravity, wends and water currents. All ready ice bergs are as far North as 55 degrees latitude. If they are reduced in size and reshaped to float further North they will come very close as a source of clean pure drinking water. Think of it. An endless source of drinking water that can be tanker’ed to a location and injected into the ground as a water bank or a municipal water system with no treatment. Cost? Free water and the energy to transport the water and the construction of the ship. you are not robbing Peters to pay Paul. Ice berg water is the most Eco-Friendly water solution going. You no longer have to build water purification plants or desalinization. The energy saved by not using the process of desalinization is the biggest cost saving all around. The tanker ship can be out fitted with solar cells on its flat top deck to supply propulsion for the engines. At night they can run on batteries supplied from the solar cells. We are not talking about supper fast speeds but a slow methodical string of tankers delivering water. No more fighting over water. Even with in a country