Girona In many rivers and streams in Catalonia, along their natural course from the mountains to the sea, less and less water has been flowing for months, with some sections stagnant, meager currents or completely dry segments. They dry up due to the obvious lack of rain that should nourish the headwaters, but above all because, in times of extreme drought, the demand for human consumption to meet the needs of the population is greater than the capacity of the river courses to regenerate yes
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If so little water comes down, fish die, ecosystems are damaged and the survival of biodiversity is put in jeopardy. For this reason, each river basin has, by law, a minimum ecological flow that human abstractions cannot lower. However, in the urgency of the drought alert and emergency phases, the Generalitat de Catalunya has been forced to overcome these barriers and significantly reduce the liters per second that feed the water fauna and flora.
In the regions of Girona, following the Government’s agreement of January 16, in the River Ter, from the Pasteral to the Gola, it is allowed to gradually pump water until the river reaches 600 l/s, despite the fact that the fixed ecological maintenance should be 5,500 l/s in a normal situation. In other words, it is nine times lower than the minimum fixed flow rate. And in the Muga, which from Pont de Molins to the sea should drop to 1,200 l/s, the flow has been drastically reduced to 40 l/s. They are 300 times less. Environmental organizations strongly criticize this management of the Catalan Water Agency (ACA) and ask to make the provision of drinking water for citizens compatible with the maintenance of biodiversity.
El Ter, overexploited by Barcelona and the Costa Brava
The demands for the maintenance of the minimum flow in the Ter are a historic ecological struggle in the Girona regions, since the construction of the Sau i Susqueda dam, which diverts part of the resource to the metropolitan area of Barcelona. Since 2017, this transfer of water has been contained and by 2023 the transfer to the capital has been 95 billion liters of water, the lowest figure in history. But it is equally important to contribute to the water stress of the river in its passage through the demarcation of Girona, taking into account the little accumulated precipitation this year.
“We don’t believe in the roadblocks set by the law because the ACA has always been breaking them; it’s more a matter of criteria and priorities, because a big city has grown [Barcelona] in a place without enough water for so many people without thinking about how it would condition the environment,” says Pau Masramon, from the Aigua és Vida de Girona platform. He continues: “With this reduction in flows, many species are becoming extinct, some endangered, when the river has not yet recovered from the drought of 2008; it’s dramatic, a certificate of announced death, without demagoguery or wanting to call it big”. Girona’s ecologists report that, between Pedret and Sarrià de Ter, as well as after the dam of the Pasteral, the Ter is already showing the first symptoms of stagnation
For Aigua és Vida, however, the transfer to Barcelona is not the only danger that threatens the survival of the Ter, since, in its passage through Girona, the river must not only supply the Girona capital and its surroundings, but also the needs of the towns of the Costa Brava, with a high demand for water for summer tourism. This is stipulated in the agreement signed between Girona City Council and the Costa Brava Water Consortium (CCB), which agrees to make shared use of the resource. Since 2012, this agreement allows the two administrations to extract 1,380 l/s from the river, a figure that exceeds by 40% the limit of 1,000 l/s established by the Ter law of 1958. “The flow is below the guarantee and the volume of extraction above the law. We need the concessions to be revoked, not to be maintained or given new ones,” says Masramon.
Rivers, the arteries of the natural environment
Without water in the rivers, the ecosystems of fauna and flora that live in the hydrological environment, as well as the forests and trees along the banks, are lost. “We have corroborated with many studies that the more the flow of a river is artificially reduced or dried, the less composition and abundance of native invertebrates or fish such as catfish, mountain barbel, eel or trout survive “, explains Emili Garcia Berthou, professor of environmental sciences at the University of Girona. “We know that, because humans draw a lot of water from the river, many stretches have less water in the account right now and this directly alters the colonization of species in the ecosystem,” he certifies. “A river is a corridor of life, a very important part of the ecosystem, and if they are impoverished our quality of life will be low, since ecosystems are not only birds and plants, but people are also part of them “, concludes Masramon.
To try to mitigate the effects of the forced reduction of flows due to the drought emergency, the ACA, twice a week for six hours, increases the rate of release of water from the reservoirs, to increase the flow of the rivers 300 liters per second.
Complaint against the Generalitat
As a result of the critical situation in the Catalan river basins, Ecologistes de Catalunya has denounced the Generalitat of Catalonia to the Prosecutor’s Office for an alleged crime against the environment. “The Government’s agreement of January 16 states that the reduction of flows must not have an impact on biodiversity, but we have infallible evidence that, with the barriers that have been approved, there are dry sections that demonstrate non-compliance this premise,” says Joan Vázquez, president of the Ecologists of Catalonia. “In the extreme case of a very prolonged drought, flows can be cut, but never eliminate biological life as is being done,” he certifies.
Ecologists consider that, after the need to supply drinking water, the second priority must be to maintain the river ecosystem, ahead of the economic activity of the sectors that need water to produce. “It is nonsense, it is necessary to plan hydrological management in time so as not to have a higher demand for the available resource; it is necessary to reduce consumption in industry and tourism, with reduced activity or temporary closure and economic compensations, as he did, for example, with covid. The situation is just as serious,” argues Vázquez.
With the maintenance of the ecological flows of the rivers as the main motto, at the beginning of April, the 34 entities from all over Catalonia that meet periodically in social summits due to the drought have called a demonstration in Girona that they expect to be massive.
La Muga, “touch of death”
If the reduction in flows in the Ter is already considerable, the case of the Muga is particularly dramatic, since it has suffered a drastic decrease of 96% of the current, from 1,200 to 40 l/s in different successions. According to the platform Iaeden – Salvem l’Empordà, a quarter of the sections of the river after the Darnius-Boadella reservoir are completely dry: “Before the reduction, the limits per second were already insufficient for the river ecosystem, but now it’s the definitive death blow: 25% of the river is dry, connectivity is lost in the different ponds and the fauna is trapped”, warns Arnau Lagresa, spokesperson for the entity. And he adds: “If solutions are not put in place, the consequences will be irreversible, since to recover the ecosystem it is not as easy as raining again, there are indices of quality of flora and fauna that do not grow back”.
Lagresa also points out that, if the Muga flows down so dry, not enough water infiltrates into the underground wells and seawater gains ground to advance inland: “Since we have the aquifers on the coast increasingly empty, the “sea water enters and salinizes these essential reserves,” he says. For the ecologists from Empordà, it is also necessary to put the preservation of the environment above the economic interests of Alt Empordà: “We cannot continue to bet on tourism or companies in the meat sector which, with around 500,000 registered pigs, consume twice as much of water than the entire population of the region”, concludes Lagresa.
2024-02-15 06:00:53
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