800 residents of Alt Empordà have been without drinking water since Christmas
The low water level of the Darnius reservoir has meant that Borrassà has to supply itself only from its municipal wells, which are contaminated by nitrates.
GironaAround Christmas, the 800 inhabitants of the small town of Borrassà, near Figueres, received an alert from the City Council that forced them to change their habits completely from one day to the next: the tap water was no longer drinkable. They could no longer fill a glass at the sink at home to quench their thirst or use running water to cook. Two months later, the situation remains the same and the residents of this municipality in the high Empordà region have had to get used to regularly travelling by car to the supermarkets in Figueres to accumulate loads of jugs of bottled water to supply themselves.
The water in the pipes of Borrassà is not drinkable as an indirect consequence of the extreme drought that Catalonia is suffering and, especially, Alt Empordà, one of the regions most affected by the lack of rain, which has returned to the emergency phase. This municipality has different municipal wells to capture water reserves, but for a long time these underground cisterns have been contaminated by nitrates from crops and farms in the area. For this reason, in a normal water situation, Borrassà received water from the Darnius Boadella reservoir and mixed it with water from the wells, to reduce the concentration of fertilizers below the permitted 50 mg/l and achieve drinkability thresholds.
However, due to the low level of the Empordà reservoir, which is around 16%, the supply reaches the municipal network with less pressure and this causes the distribution pumps of the City Council to not work correctly. Without being able to mix the water from the wells with that from the reservoir to dilute the nitrates, only contaminated water comes out of all the taps in Borrassà.
An 8-litre bottle per person per week
"There are four of us at home and every week we have to go and get four or five 8-litre bottles from Figueres, because we don't have a shop in Borrassà," admits Jordi, a resident of the village. He adds: "It's quite a burden and the problem isn't drinking water, but cooking water, which is what drives up consumption. As you have to go and buy it, you realise how much drinking water we use every day almost without realising it."
Beyond the hassle of travelling every time to get a basic service like water, those who suffer the most from the situation are families with elderly people in their care, who can't take the car or lift heavy bottles. "My mother is elderly and every two days we take her to the packs "We use individual one-litre bottles, which don't weigh as much and can therefore be handled better, and we also make sure that she doesn't run out of them," admits the daughter of an 87-year-old woman. It is also more complicated for families with small children, as it is easy for them to take a sip of water while they shower, but we don't like that with children and we try to get them to shower very quickly and not make any baths," comments a mother from the school.
Borrassà is a small town, with no major municipal facilities that are directly affected by this situation. There is only one restaurant, which is currently closed, and the Ateneu bar continues to serve by buying bottles, without raising prices, although, obviously, using bottled water is more expensive. It has also had repercussions on the school, with about 60 students and a canteen service, which the Town Hall supplies with whole pallets of bottles.
The solution, within a month
The mayor, Joan Hurtós, explains that they have not considered bringing in tanker trucks, as other Catalan municipalities have done to deal with sporadic situations of lack of reserves, such as Cadaqués or Falset. "It is a solution designed for municipalities that do not have enough water; we have it, but it is not drinkable, and for the moment we are already buying bottled water, because it will be fixed in the short term," he says. And he adds: "It is not the first time that this has happened to us; historically, before connecting to the Darnius reservoir, Borrassà had already had many periods of undrinkable water due to nitrates."
The solution proposed by the City Council is the installation of a tank to retain and store the water that comes from the reservoir, so that the motors can pump it without problem. The council has already presented the proposal to the Catalan Water Agency (ACA), which will respond in the next few days. The work will cost around 40,000 euros, which will initially be covered by the ACA's line of aid for emergency actions, and it is expected that it will be operational within a month and the water will be drinkable again.