The price of water will rise in the Barcelona area, as well as in other parts of Catalonia, starting next January 1, 2024. The main distribution company, Aigües Ter-Llobregat (ATL), has decided to update its rates and “adapt them to the current context” where the drought, the increase in the price of electricity and inflation have caused a substantial increase in treatment costs and distribution of waters. Following this decision, it is estimated that The cost of water could increase by an average of one euro per person per month. In total, with this new update it is estimated that the rate could go from the current 0.74 euros per m3 at 0.99 euros per m3.
The measure will be voted on and approved this Tuesday. Afterwards, it will be up to the city councils to study how they apply it to their respective municipalities. He final impact on users’ bills It will depend, for example, on how much water a city obtains from the Ter-Llobregat circuit, as well as the agreements with the distributors and the budgets of each council. In total, according to figures provided by the company, the rate increase will affect the water that is supplies water to 90% of the population in Catalonia (the equivalent of 5.5 million people). Between these Cities such as, for example, Barcelona, Mataró and Terrassa stand out.
This is the first time a water price increase has been announced derived from the extreme drought situation that Catalonia is currently experiencing. Although, yes, a measure in this direction had been announced for a long time. Especially because, according to sources from the main water distributor in Catalonia, the lack of water resources has forced infrastructure with a high energy need, such as desalination plants, to be put into overdrive. So that, it has gone beyond 0.05 that it cost to purify a cubic meter of water from the river to the 30 cents how much it costs to obtain the equivalent of desalinated water.
Cost increase
The ‘wholesale’ water rate (that is, the one that depends directly on the ATL distributor) It has not been updated since 2017. In theory, according to current regulations, this should be reviewed every four years. But since the next price revision coincided with the runaway increase in inflation, throughout 2022 and 2023, the Generalitat temporarily assumed the increase in the price of water. “The rate update that we announced today is not a surprise to anyone. The town councils already knew that next year they would have a new rate,” explains David Vila Ligero, director of ATL.
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As explained by the distributor, the main reason behind the increase in the water rate is, in turn, increasing energy needs for the production and treatment of water. Especially if you take into account that in the last year the two desalination plants that Catalonia has have gone from working at 25% of their capacity to practically 100%. To this we must add that, since last January 1, the cost of the electricity required in these facilities has skyrocketed by more than 50%. It is estimated that all this has increased by nearly 60 million euros production costs. It has also been detected a increase of 40 million additional euros in the purchase of reagents to treat and purify water.
“This new rate also reflects how many of the reinforcements we have activated in recent months to address the drought They go from being something punctual to something much more structural“Adds Vila to explain the reason for this increase in the price of water. For at least two years now, Catalonia has suffered a rainfall deficit and has seen its water reserves decline little by little. Everything indicates that this situation, far from an anomaly, will be repeated more and more frequently in the future. Hence, as Vila explains, the need to reinforce water production circuits such as desalination plants and continue investing to safeguard “every drop of water that is possible.”