Few showers, problems washing dishes or making coffee, empty swimming pools and a greater awareness of climate change are some of the consequences of the water restrictions suffered for a week by the residents of five towns in the region of the Conca de Barberà (Tarragona).
With the swamps Catalans below 39%, the alert for drought It is beginning to have consequences on the water supply in this area of Tarragona and has forced the activation of the hydrological alert in 279 Catalan towns, where more than 683,000 people live.
The accidental mayor of L’Espluga de Francoli (Tarragona), Aida Morgades, explained that the city council decided on August 17 cut off supply of water from ten at night to seven in the morning due to a progressive decrease in the water levels of their wells due to the lack of rain. This town in Tarragona has imposed a time limit on water and has asked nearby municipalities to send tankers to supply its neighbors.
“We receive from Monday to Friday six vats a day with 150 cubic meters of water each that arrive from Montblanc,” said the mayor, who expects these measures to remain active until it rains again. The city council has also urged the population to make restricted use of water and use it only in strictly necessary situations.
change of routines
“We irrigate the gardens with non-potable water and we don’t fill the swimming pools. In the oldest houses, we leave bottles of water in the bathroom to be able to use it during restricted hours,” explained Olga Herrerias, a resident of l’Espluga de Francolí.
“In my house we don’t have any water tank and we have been forced to start our routines earlier before going to sleep”, confesses Ferran Lozano, from Esplugu, who misses “the shower after work”, especially during this time of vintage. “I think that as inhabitants we are aware of the water problem in our town, since we already monitor water consumption throughout the year, but we do expect heavy rains to arrive soon,” he is hopeful. “Cuts like these make you aware of climate change, which is causing longer and stronger periods of drought,” says Lozano, resigned.
This situation, however, is much more complicated for restaurant businesssince they are the ones that have been most limited by the new restrictions: “locals have problems cleaning dinner plates or preparing coffee,” acknowledges the mayor.
The situation of L’Espluga de Francolí is not isolated, since the residents of various municipalities of Conca de Barberà such as Santa Coloma de Queralt, Passanant i Belltall, Llorac, Forès, Les Piles and Sarral they also suffer restrictions on the use of water.
“political mismanagement”
The Passanant i Belltall City Council has also agreed to cut off the supply for 12 hours a day, from seven in the afternoon to seven in the morning, because the wells have dried up, reported the Councilor for Culture and Rurality, Miriam Berengue. “This drought has brought us harsh consequences, beyond the lack of water, because it has damaged our crops and caused fires,” remarks Berengué.
The councilor denounces what she considers a “political mismanagement“by institutions such as the County Council or the Catalan Water Agency (ACA), to which he attributes “also being responsible for this situation”. “Why don’t we have sewage treatment plants and why do we still maintain water management from the last century?” asks Berengué, who doesn’t see any logic “that so many towns don’t have drinking water in the 21st century.” “There are towns that have been without water for months. It seems that they want to let us die of abandonment,” laments the mayor.
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Another of the municipalities affected by the lack of water is Sarral, which, for the first time in decades, has had to connect, since February, with a pipe to the Tarragona Water Consortium (CAT) network. “One of the most serious problems is the state of the town’s pipes, which are very old, in addition to the fact that half of the houses in Sarral do not have a meter because they still work with gauging (a way of counting the water in the tank)” , according to the mayor of the municipality, Victòria Cañís.
“The water supply we now have from the CAT, apart from being provisional, is inefficient: it is a very small tube that prevents us from taking more quantity even if we need it,” stressed Cañís, who urgently “approves an effective project that works in the whole region.”