Barcelona forced to ship in water

by amyjudd | May 13, 2008 at 04:38 pm | 249 views | 2 comments

Barcelona is so dry that the city is being forced to begin shipping in drinking water in an effort to avoid water restrictions before the wave of tourists come for their summer holidays.

A ship carrying 19,000 cubic metres of water from nearby Tarragona docked in Barcelona's port on Tuesday morning.
A second vessel from Marseille in France is scheduled to arrive in the coming days.
The port city on Spain's Mediterranean coast is among the areas hardest hit by the worst springtime drought in the country since records began 60 years ago. With reservoirs at significantly low levels and no substantial rainfall predicted, regional authorities are hoping to subsist until a desalination plant is completed in May next year.
The regional government of Catalonia, of which Barcelona is the capital, said six ships a month will bring in a total of 1.66 million cubic metres of water. That is roughly enough to satisfy six per cent of the monthly needs of the region's 5.5 million inhabitants.
The shipments are scheduled to last at least three months.
Leonard Carcole, director-general of Aguas de Barcelona, the city's water utility, said: "It has been one of the driest years ever, and Barcelona has found itself in need of water." Catalonia's reservoirs are only at about a fifth of their capacity, compared with reservoirs that are on average half full nationally.
Authorities fear reservoirs could drop to 15 per cent of their capacity, a level at which it is no longer recommended that water be used for human consumption.
Responsible usage
Authorities hope a new desalination plant, one of the biggest in Europe, will be operational in May of next year and resolve much of Catalonia's water woes.