Starting next Monday, the Ter-Llobregat area will move from the emergency stage to the emergency stage exceptionality this will slightly reduce water use restrictions in this Zone, which includes the city of Barcelona.
Thanks to recent rains, the level of reserves stands at 24.8%, with 154hm3, at an increasing trend. It should be recalled that in March, during the month of March, during the worst moment of the drought the level of reserves was 15%.
Once the measure is published in the Official Gazette of the Generalitat de Catalunya, these are the new features that the regulation will incorporate:
Exceptional measures
The exceptional situation allows for a water supply of 230 liters per inhabitant per day (in the emergency situation it was 200 liters).
In addition, in rivers, the minimum emergency flows are changed back to environmental flows, thus better ensuring the biodiversity of water bodies.
Reductions
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- Provision of agricultural irrigation: 40% or the replacement of part of the flows with reclaimed water (in emergency it was 80%).
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- Industry: 15% of water consumption (in emergency it was 25%).
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- Recreational uses: 15% for uses assimilable to urban and 50% for irrigation.
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- Livestock uses: 30% (in emergency it was 50%). Possibility to make these reductions more flexible by submitting a Water Saving Plan to the ACA.
Prohibitions
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- Irrigation of public or private gardens and green areas (except for survival irrigation of trees or plants, which shall be drip or sprinkler irrigation).
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- Municipal irrigation with groundwater is allowed if it does not imply a reduction in the availability of water for domestic supply.
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- The irrigation of lawns is prohibited in all cases, except in areas intended for federated sports practice, or irrigation using rainwater collected from roofs or reclaimed water from sewage treatment plants.
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- Cleaning of streets, sewers, pavements, facades or buildings with potable water is prohibited.
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- Vehicles may only be cleaned in authorized establishments.
Swimming pools
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- The filling of private swimming pools for individual or single-family use is not permitted under any circumstances.
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- Nor can pools without water recirculation systems be filled or refilled.
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- With a recirculation system, it is possible to fill public swimming pools and private swimming pools of homeowners’ communities, agritourism, halls of residence and similar facilities with the minimum quantities necessary to guarantee their sanitary quality. Also pools for therapeutic use located in hospitals and special education centers.
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- Filling and refilling of single-family swimming pools intended for bathing by persons with an assessed degree of disability who are shown to have behavioral disturbances is permitted.
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- In educational centers, the complete or partial filling of removable pools with a capacity of less than 500 liters is allowed for children’s bathing. These limitations do not apply to seawater pools that are filled and emptied without connection to public supply and sanitation networks.