By Joan Faus
BARCELONA (Reuters) – Some light rain will be enough for Catalonia to avoid further emergency curbs on water use, a regional official said, as the Spanish region tackles its worst drought on record.
“We need very little rain to avoid entering phase two,” David Mascort, the Catalonian regional government’s environmental chief, told Reuters on Friday.
Under a first phase of restrictions, residents have to cut their water usage by 5% and farmers by up to 80%. Mascort raised the possibility of easing some of these, such as lifting the ban on filling swimming pools in the case of communal facilities.
Rainfall would avoid a second wave of measures under a state of emergency already affecting six million people in 200 towns and cities, including Spain’s second largest city Barcelona.
Even the same low rain levels as May and June of last year, accounting to between 150 litres to 200 litres per square meter of rain over a period of one to two weeks, would allow Catalonia to drop the state of emergency, Mascort said.
Reservoir levels would then be at 20% of their capacity from the current 15%, he added in an interview.
“Will this happen? We have been waiting for it to rain as it should for three years”, he said.
Some parts of the Iberian peninsula are at their driest in 1,200 years, a 2022 study showed, forcing officials to consider bringing in water by ship to Barcelona, as in 2008, for essential services such as hospitals.
Without enough rain, Barcelona would need not only to bring in water from a desalination plant near Valencia but potentially also more water from neighbouring Tarragona as well as the French city of Marseille, Mascort said.
Mascort said water use has fallen 16% year-on-year in some areas and overall consumption is lower than in nearby regions.
“People are making a great effort … and that’s why we have been able to survive 40 months of drought”.
(Reporting by Joan Faus; Editing by Charlie Devereux and Alexander Smith)
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