WATER MANAGEMENT ALONG THE SPANISH MEDITERRANEAN COAST
A summary of the report prepared by Antonio
Estevan (Gea21) for the Platform for the Defence of the River Ebro.
The two Ebro water transferences featured in
the Spanish government’s National Hydrological Plan (NHP), one towards the
north, another larger one towards the south, are becoming more and more of a
European problem, for several reasons:
Ever since the presentation of the NHP, the
question of the Ebro transferences has been dealt with politically with an
unusual fervour and degree of nervousness, which has not permitted the
establishing of suitable conditions for calm, wise decision-making. The
European Commission could help to redirect this matter towards a more rational
debate, promoting alternatives which would be more coherent with EU policies
and regulations. To this end …
This report offers data and ideas which may
help to find solutions which fit in with EU policies, with acceptable economic
costs (considerably lower than those of the transferences), and a more
efficient guarantee that the interests of all the affected water users will be
looked after.
The so-called “Spanish water problem” has two
sides to it, one visible, the other invisible. The visible side is the
existence of 60,000 hectares of land in Murcia and south Alicante. They were
classified as “irrigation lands” at the time of the disastrous Tajo-Segura
transference, or have been converted illegally as the authorities turn a blind
eye. However, they have never had a suitable guarantee of water. The invisible,
or not widely-known, side to the question is the recent development of
irrigated crop agriculture in the west of Castilla-La Mancha on a huge scale.
This is causing additional tension on the already precarious results of the
Tajo-Segura transference and is breaking the historical balance of the Júcar
river basin, which had previously supported agriculture in Valencia. Most of
the water of the Ebro’s projected south-bound transference would be destined
for these areas: 450 hm ³ for the Tajo-Segura system, and 200 hm³ for
Castilla-La Mancha obtained from the Júcar as a compensation.
However, both of these problems have only
recently been created, in the last decades of the 20th century.
Firstly, Spanish water management has for too long encouraged expectations of
water for irrigation and allowed the expansion of these lands in the Segura
basin, without being able to control or supply them. Secondly, the Common
Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the EU has encouraged, via subsidies, the planting
of crops such as corn or alfalfa, both ecologically unsuitable for semi-arid
plains. The productivity of water for these crops on the Castilian steppes is
one of the lowest known: it takes 1.7 m³ of water to produce 1 kg of corn, with
each cubic metre of water giving a gross profit (before subtracting production
costs) of 0.10 Euros.
There can be no solution to the water problems
of the Mediterranean area of Spain without reorganising its agriculture to
environmentally suitable policies, such as the ones within the present revision
of the CAP. According to this philosophy,
the planting of subsidised crops should be limited in relation to their
adaptability to the ecology of the area, with water requirements and natural
climate being two of the key factors in these decisions. Once the revised CAP
can discourage the planting of corn and other similar water-thirsty crops in
Castilla-La Mancha, by offering alternatives to maintain or improve people’s
incomes, the hundreds of cubic hectometres freed would quickly restore the
hydrological balance of La Mancha, thus reducing the current pressure on the
Júcar and Tajo-Segura resources. Obviously, the 200 hm³ proposed in the Ebro
transference for the Júcar basin to compensate the effects of this
unsustainable corn irrigation would not be necessary.
The only reasonable solution for the Segura
would be to deal with these 60,000 hectares which make up the “Spanish
hydrological problem”. 10 or 15 thousand of these should never have been
transformed into irrigation lands and should now be reconverted into their true
vocations as salt marshes, fens, or simply left as dry lands. A second group of
lands, between 15 and 20 thousand hectares, of limited agronomical use and
unconsolidated land rights should be reclassified as “temporary irrigation
lands”. These would only receive water in years of sufficient resources.
Compensations for the removal or reduction of these lands should be canalised
via restructuring programmes of the revised CAP.
The remaining 25 to 35 thousand hectares,
chosen for their agricultural potential and consolidated rights, would need
about 150 hm³ per year. These resources would then be provided by the
Tajo-Segura system, from a combination of the water freed by the restructuring
of the La Mancha crops and water desalinisation. The costs of this should be
included in the general Tajo-Segura system as this would be completing a
transference which has failed because of a lack of resources in their
headwaters.
The technology for desalinising sea-water is
seen as being high in energy costs, and hence intrinsically expensive and
environmentally suspect. However, this reputation is no longer true. The
reality is that the theoretical energy cost limit of desalinising sea-water is
at 0.77 KWh/m³ in ideal conditions. This is approximately the energy needed to
extract water from a well depth of 200 metres. Clearly, these conditions are
unobtainable in real life, but over recent years the technology of inverse
osmosis is reducing the energy consumption to levels which would have been
unimaginable a decade ago.
At present, desalinisation technology is
experiencing a qualitative technology jump in the recovery of residual energy,
which has allowed its energy consumption to drop from 5 KWh/m³ to 3 KWh/m³ in
five years. It is expected to drop to 2 KWh/m³ by the end of the decade.
These technological advances in desalinisation
have also led to a fall in production costs of about 30% from the mid-nineties
to now. The present day standard cost
for large installations is now around 0.50 euros/m³, including redemption
costs. This fall in costs will continue in the future, with expectations of a
cost of 0.40 euros/m³ by the end of the decade. Given these perspectives,
desalinisation will become a reasonable alternative in the mid-term, as long as
high electrical efficiency is assured, and water management is improved.
The ineffective solution of the NHP: transferring bad quality water.
The deficient quality of the lower Ebro waters
is well-known in Spanish hydrology matters. The Ebro has a high level of
salinity due to a combination of natural and anthropical reasons, with an abundance of sulphates and chlorides
and a significant presence of sodium. At Xerta, the probable point of
transference, the river shows high indexes of non-compliance with European
water quality directives, in over 50% of the samples for some parameters. Under
these conditions even the legality of
dedicating the Ebro water for drinking water would be questionable, as
the NHP pretends to do with 440 hm³ (about 42% of the transferred water). Besides
this, the Ebro quality shows a clear historical tendency to worsen, according
to official data, with an average annual salinity increase of 1%.
The numerous works along the Ebro and Segre
(the Pyrenees river which “dilutes” the lower Ebro) basins projected in the NHP
would result in an average salinity at Xerta 30 or 40% above the guidelines
offered by the European Commission. Furthermore, because of the variability of
the Ebro’s flow and quality, it would reach levels double those recommended in
some autumns. It has to be noted that at these levels not only would the water
be worthless for urban use, but would also be negative for agrarian systems
threatened by salinisation as is the case along the Mediterranean.
The hydrological strategy for the Spanish
Mediterranean areas should have looked for an improvement in water quality as
its main priority. This is exactly the opposite of what the NHP proposes. The
NHP has turned a blind eye to these problems of quality and has left the
transference options in a dead end. It is totally contrary to the Water
Framework Directive which favours policies to “reduce the amount of treatment
necessary for the production of drinking water”.
To use the Ebro’s water for urban needs on a
large scale (440 hm³ is the supply of 4.5 million people) with a corresponding
guarantee of quality, only leaves two options: it is swapped for the resources
now used for agriculture along the Mediterranean as they are of a better
quality, or the transferred water is treated to reduce its salinity, with the
economic and energetic costs this would involve. Both options would lead to a
conflictive situation, far from the rosy picture painted in the official
documents of the NHP.
The economic costs of a mistaken strategy.
The model of the NHP used to calculate its
costs refers to the ideal functioning of the transference, an obviously unreal
situation as this would suppose transferring 100% of the objectives and zero
losses. It is only a theoretical model but, on the other hand, is the only one
given in the official evaluation of the plan.
The numbers have been re-calculated to obtain a
more realistic cost prediction. We have analysed the two transferences (north
and south-bound) separately and contemplated various possible scenarios. We have
taken different percentages of water capture and losses of 12%, a typical loss
for a long distance transference of these characteristics.
The results we obtained are vastly different
from the official ones. In any reasonable hypothesis of efficiency and losses,
the average costs would be over 0.50 euros/m³. This is 60% higher than the
official figures. The net investment value would be negative. An analysis of
these figures shows that an hypothetical transfer from the Ebro only to the
Segura basin, the area suffering from the “Spanish hydrological problem”, would be so expensive both on economic terms
and energy ones, and offer such fragile benefits, as to be completely unviable.
To “solve” this question, the NHP has used various accounting techniques to
“dilute” the costs of the Ebro-Segura transfer between various projects, adding
scarcely justifiable demands, and joining the north and south-bound transfers
in the same calculations, although they are completely independent projects.
The combination of the requirements of the NHP
Law itself, Law 10/2001, referring to auto-financing of the transfers, and the
realistic economic data demonstrates a clear unviability of both projects. To
balance the costs, even given the ideal 100% capture and zero losses, if
farmers only pay the 0.20 euros/m³ reported in the Spanish media, then urban
users would have to pay 0.58 euros/m³ even before treating this water. There
can be no reason why water companies would buy low quality water at prices
above those of desalinised sea-water.
If we take into account the energy consumption
of the life-cycle of this project, including the energy for construction and
maintenance , and for treating water for urban use, then this project also
falls apart on energy grounds. The energy consumption diagnosis for both
transfers would be completely different from the official estimates.
Using any reasonable capture performance and
transport loss, the transfers would be less efficient than desalinising water.
If we take a capture of 75% and a loss of 12%, for instance, with treatment of
urban water only, the energy costs for the south-bound transfer would be 3.3
KWh/m³. For the demands of Almeria, and
the Murcia highlands, the energy costs would be above 4 KWh/m³, a similar cost
to the water destined for Benidorm. We must compare this to present energy
costs for desalinisation of 3 KWh/m³, which are falling continually.
Given the scale of predicted gas emissions
because of the transfers, especially the south-bound one (tens of millions of
tonnes of CO2), this project could run into an additional problem relating to
the EU’s requirements for the Kyoto Protocol. Spain is already one of the main
culprits in not complying with this agreement. We must also add that the huge
emissions due to the construction work of the transfers would occur precisely
in the years coming up to the Kyoto horizons.
Given this, the European Commission should not
give an opinion on the environmental
sustainability of the NHP before having a thorough study of the energy
question. This should use life-cycle methodology, and use reasonable hypothesis
of performance, efficiency and losses. It should be compared to energy
consumption figures of alternative technologies. Only then will the EU avoid
the possibly embarrassing situation of realising that it has financed a huge
project which has caused it to fail the Kyoto Protocol, leading to more EU
investments to cut back this excessive gas emission.
The European Commission should start to study
possible economically and ecologically reasonable alternatives, without
dropping the zero emission objective, to facilitate a European solution for
these water problems. This would be feasible under these conditions:
A solution based on these guidelines would not
only fulfil European Directives and regulations, but would also offer an
impulse to present European policies on energy, water and agriculture. It would
be environmentally unquestionable, on both local and global impacts. It would
be much more acceptable socially, and simpler and quicker to set up. It would
also, of course, require much lower investments than the NHP’s proposed
transfers.