Plataforma Salvemos la Montaña de Cáceres, 1 April 2024

Overview of the Cáceres lithium mine project

The lithium mine project at San José de Valdeflorez, less than 2 km from the town of Cáceres, which has a population of 100,000, is a perfect example of the perversion of a part of public institutions and politics that puts the short-term profit of mining and its tentacles into society before the security of the water supply, its recognition and its protection. It was revealed in the city in 2017, along with various errors in the administrative process by which the research permits were granted.

Translation in English of the press release from Red Agua Pública

9 June 2021

On 16 December 2020, the Parliament and the Council of the European Union adopted the Directive 2020/2184 on the quality of water intended for human consumption. This legislation replaced the then existing legislation dating from 1998, which was clearly outdated. The revision of the directive was largely motivated by pressure from the Right2Water Citizens' Initiative "The right to water and sanitation as a human right", which was supported by nearly 2 million European citizens and many social organisations who argued that water supply cannot be governed by internal market rules, must be left out of the liberalisation process, and must meet strict conditions of information, public participation and accountability, all in the general context of the recognition of the human right to water.

Although the European Parliament took on board the demands of the Right2Water initiative, in the process of revising the 1998 directive, a significant part of the citizens' demands were relegated to the background, so that the directive approved in December 2020, although it represents an important step forward with respect to the previous one, does not cover the fundamental part of the citizens' demands expressed in the Right2Water initiative.

In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity as set out in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union, the government has set in motion the process of transposing the new directive into Spanish law. This process, which is being led by the Ministry of Health, is being carried out in an opaque manner without encouraging citizen participation in an issue in which they should have a special presence, considering the defining principles of the human right to water.

In this context, the Red Aqua Pública has written to the Minister of Health -see attached letter-, denouncing this circumstance and offering its collaboration so that the transposition of the European directive includes the citizens' demands that were overlooked in the directive approved in December 2020. The letter has been sent to the heads of the Ministries of Consumer Affairs and Ecological Transition, as they are also directly involved in the process.

More information by :

Leandro del Moral 620666912
Pedro Pablo Serrano 649824397
Gonzalo Marín 646559647

The Red Aqua Pública (RAP) is a space that brings together dozens of platforms, social, environmental, trade union and political organisations in Spain that promote a vision of water as a commons and public service, and fight for the defence of public, non-profit, transparent and participatory management of water supply and sanitation services.

Letter to the Minister of Health

Translation into English of an article from the Taula del Llobregat

The Llobregat delta has retreated 800 metres in a century. A study by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya reveals that the width of the river at its mouth was 275 metres in 1846 and is currently 36 metres.

Scientists from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya reveal surprising data on the Llobregat river and its delta, in a study published in the journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences. The most significant data is the quantification of the delta's retreat in just over 100 years. Using geolocated historical maps, they determined that the Llobregat delta, at its mouth, retreated 800 metres between 1891 and 2000, before the diversion of the mouth for the expansion of the Port of Barcelona.

These data are relevant because it has never been calculated with this level of precision. "This retreat is very important. We knew that sand was being added to the Llobregat delta because it was retreating, but the extent of this retreat was unknown," explains Arnau Prats, a researcher at the UPC and one of the co-authors of the study.

The scientists started with a hypothesis that was not subsequently confirmed. "The hypothesis we put forward was that infrastructures, civil engineering works, the AVE railway, dams, but above all the motorway and the expressway, were responsible for this modification of the lower course of the Llobregat", explains Carles Ferrer, professor and researcher at the UPC and one of the three authors of the study.

Les universitaires ont eu une surprise : "La voie rapide et l'autoroute ont été construites il y a 50 ans et l'échelle de temps du recul du delta est de plus d'un siècle", souligne Juan P. Martín Vide, également enseignant et chercheur à l'UPC et troisième co-auteur de l'étude. Il fallait donc chercher les causes ailleurs.

The Llobregat lock dams and the erosive action of the sea, main causes of the delta's retreat

The authors of the study consider that the reservoir dams of La Baells, La Llosa del Caballo and Santo Ponç are not the main cause of the delta's retreat because they are located several kilometres from the mouth and "the transport of sediment is slow", according to researcher Arnau Prats. He explains that "the transport of coarse sediments from the bottom of the river can take decades to arrive from Baells to the mouth".

The three authors of the study -Juan P. Martín Vide, Carles Ferrer and Arnau Prats- point to the lock dams as the main cause of the delta's retreat. They were built throughout the 19th century with the aim of exploiting hydraulic energy. These infrastructures, as well as the different channels in the last river section, have reduced the contribution of coarse sediments to Prat de Llobregat, which are the ones that make the delta move forward. In addition, the action of the waves has eroded the land that the river had gained on the sea.

On the other hand, the researchers found that when there is a flood at the headwaters of the river, the marshes reduce the supply of sediment because they reduce the water flow by 20%. And this reduction has an effect on the transport of sand and gravel. "We have found that the reservoir dams cause, on average, a 20% reduction in the peak flow of the Llobregat at the river mouth, and that this 20% reduction leads to a 40% reduction in the transport of sediments from the river. Nevertheless, the impact of this inertia is still limited in the delta. According to Professor Juan P. Martin Vide, the effect "will be more important in a few decades".

Eliminating channelling to reverse the trend

Scientists do not foresee miracle solutions but a change in the trend. "We can't talk about solutions like in other areas of life or engineering, where everything is solved once the remedy is known and applied. Here, we should rather think of changes in trends", explains Juan P. Martín Vide.

They believe that the measures that can be taken will take a long time to become visible. "We have to keep in mind that these lock dams are located several kilometres upstream from the delta. Therefore, any action taken now would take a long time to be noticed," adds Carles Ferrer. He suggests: "In addition to the lock dams, we could also think about the small streams, tributaries, etc. that are channelled through concrete dikes, which also limit the sediment supply to the delta and are closer to the mouth. We could think about removing these channels which, in the long term, could help to increase the sediment supply from the Llobregat to the delta.

The removal of these channels and lock dams is the long-term solution proposed by the study, while the traditional provision of sand on the beaches of the delta is a short-term and ephemeral measure.

The new river mouth, a sediment trap

The Llobregat is one of the rivers that have been intensively exploited since the industrial revolution in Catalonia.

From its source in Castellar de n'Hug to its mouth in Prat de Llobregat, there are 170 kilometres of reservoir dams at La Baells, La Llosa del Caballo and Santo Ponç, as well as numerous lock dams and channels.

In 2004, the diversion of the mouth 2 km further south than the original mouth was inaugurated, due to the expansion of the port of Barcelona. However, the infrastructure did not foresee what would happen to the sediment. "The new mouth is twice as wide as the old one. And this poses a problem for the transport of sediment from the river to the beach. During floods, when there is more sediment transport, the riverbed is wider and the water velocity is therefore lower. As a result, the material transported by the river is trapped at the bottom and reaches the coast less. And this fact is not without consequences: "What happens is that this bottom increases because of the accumulation of sand that comes from upstream and is not deposited on the coast. And this, in the long term, can be a problem because the hydraulic capacity of this channel can decrease due to the rise in the bottom," concludes researcher Arnau Prats.

The "hardest working" river

Since the beginning of the 19th century, the Llobregat River has been equipped with lock dams and channels to supply the textile factories born of the industrial revolution. So much so that the French geographer Pierre Deffontaines (1894-1978) said: "Perhaps no river in the world has been so intensively exploited as the indigent Llobregat".

Sources :

https://beteve.cat/medi-ambient/retroces-delta-riu-llobregat/

https://www.sostenible.cat/reportatge/el-preu-de-la-revolucio-industrial-al-llobregat

The Grup de Defensa del Ter has been analysing the nitrate concentration in springs located in the counties of Osona and Lluçanès for 19 years and this year the historical record for nitrate concentration was broken in one of these springs. The analysis was made possible thanks to 53 volunteers from the Grup de Defensa del Ter who visited 164 springs, 13 of which were not flowing. The average nitrate concentration was 72 mg/l, while the WHO has set the limit for the drinking water purification at a nitrate concentration of 50 mg/l. The average value this year is slightly lower than in 2019, which was 76 mg/l, although the difference is not significant enough to assume that there has been a real decrease in pollution. We still have almost half of the contaminated springs, about 45%.

The Gana spring in Calldetenes with 492.2 mg/l of nitrates was the most polluted this year, beating the historical record since the beginning of the analyses in 2002, followed by two springs usually on the podium, the Gallisans spring in Santa Cecília de Voltregà, with 465.8 mg/l, and in third place, the Cassanell spring in Taradell, with 344.80 mg/l. Last year, the first prize was awarded to the latter source, with 456.8 mg/l. This year, however, the Gana spring is at nearly 500 mg/l of nitrate, a value 10 times higher than what the WHO allows for the drinking water purification. This is undoubtedly the highest value we have found in 19 years of source analysis.

Read more in Catalan on the website of the Grup de Defensa del Ter

The Red Agua Pública (RAP) claims the need to assume the climate emergency and the determination to advance in the fight against climate change. The RAP reaffirms the demand to implement public, democratic, transparent and sustainable management models for the integral urban water cycle.

Every year, on 22 March, at the initiative of the United Nations, World Water Day is commemorated with the aim of drawing attention to problem of water through relevant issues. In 2020, the World Water Day has been focused on the relationship between climate change and water, and the impacts and the policies for adapting to climate change affect and are related to water directly.

There is a broad social and scientific consensus that the impacts of climate change on water resources will lead to substantial changes in the availability, quality and quantity of water for aquatic ecosystems and basic human needs. It can threat the effective enjoyment of the human rights to water and sanitation. Food sovereignty, human health, urban and rural settlements, energy production, industrial and economic development, employment and ecosystems are all dependent on water and therefore vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

Barcelona´s city growth obliged it to expand beyond its own walls and expand onto the Eixample district. Since then, the management of water resources has mainly been in private hands and has grown in this way throughout the majority of towns and cities of the larger Metropolitan Area. Despite this fact, in 2010 a Barcelona court ruled that there was no public contracting situation to regulate this management. Two years on in 2012 the government of Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona (AMB) created a mixed company as partners with Sociedad General de Agua de Barcelona (AGBAR group) to manage the urban water cycle of supply and sanitation.

In 2016, the mixed partnership was cancelled by the Supreme Court of Catalonia (TSJC) due to various irregularities: there had been no reasoning as to why the mixed partnership was the better option, besides the contract was ´passed on´ -conceded without public tender- the private part of the mixed venture, and finally, the valuation of assets was tipped very obviously in AGBAR’s favor. The court ruling by the TSJC will be considered in the next months by the Supreme Court of Spain, which is under the obligation of reaching a final verdict. If this verdict rules against the mixed company, this would make a perfect opportunity to make the water system public again for the communities of AMB.

26 July 2018

Nearly 18 years after deadline expired, nine municipalities still lack proper collection or treatment systems.

The European Court of Justice on Wednesday ordered Spain to pay a €12 million fine for prolonged failure to comply with a European directive on urban waste water collection and treatment.

In an earlier judgment issued in 2011, this court had found that there were still 43 agglomerations with a population of 15,000 or more that failed to meet EU standards, even though member states were supposed to have adequate collection and treatment systems in place since 2001.

Spain was given a 2013 deadline to comply, but the deadline expired and 17 localities were still discharging their waste water without proper treatment.

In 2017, the EU Commission brought new action, and the Court of Justice has now fined Spain a lump sum of €12 million, plus a penalty payment of €11 million for every six-month period of delay in getting the remaining municipalities up to speed on their water treatment standards.

As of today, there are nine Spanish municipalities that still fail to meet EU urban waste water regulations: seven in Andalusia (Matalascañas, Alhaurín el Grande, Isla Cristina, Tarifa, Coín, Nerja and Barbate), one in Asturias (Gijón Este) and one in the Canary Islands (Valle de Güímar).

Read more on website of El País

March, 22, 2018

A wide range of (Spanish) civil society organizations and entities agree that we are facing a really decisive moment to recover and maintain the good state of conservation of our aquatic ecosystems, not only to comply with the Water Framework Directive and other commitments. Europeans in this area, but to adapt to the reality imposed by climate change, reduce our vulnerability to the growing risks of drought and floods and ensure sustainable use of water, with demands adapted to the resources actually available. On the other hand, we face privatization pressures, both in terms of the commodification of water rights and the privatization of water and sanitation services and even irrigation management.

The unsustainable growth of water demands, both in irrigation and urban-industrial uses, is currently one of the main problems to achieve a sustainable use of water and the good ecological status of our ecosystems.

The water company denounces three activists for an action performed last February, thus trying to slow down the fight for the right to basic supplies.

Barcelona, May 7th 2018

From the APE (Aliança contra la Pobresa Energètica) we have worked since we were born to stop the supply cuts in Catalonia and have confronted the large multinationals of water, electricity and gas to demand the protection of such essential rights as the access to water and energy. We have achieved jointly with the PAH (Plataforma d'Afectats per la Hipoteca) and the ODESC (Observatori de Drets Econòmics Socials i Culturals), as well as with the support of many other entities and groups, to promote a law that has stopped more than 40,000 supply cuts in Catalonia and we have located the supply companies at the center of the problem, pointing to these companies with multimillionaire benefits, as responsible for a scourge that affects more than 10% of the population in Catalonia.

As of today, Aigües de Barcelona (Agbar-Suez Group) has decided to bring to trial three APE activists for a complaint action that took place at its commercial offices in Barcelona on February 27th. With this action, Agbar demonstrates to go against those who defend the rights of citizens and choose the path of repression against organized civil society.

They share the desire to build a broad citizen movement that covers the entire river basin where the need for a living Llobregat river meets the social movement for water as a commons.

Terrassa, April 2018. 

In a meeting held in Terrassa this April, various actors related to the Llobregat river met, convened by the Taula de l'Aigua de Terrassa and by ProuSal! with the intention of promoting a Taula de conca (river basin table), informing how water flows from the source to the mouth. 

This first meeting was attended by councillors from Cornellà, Abrera, Olesa and Rubí, together with the organisations Aigua es Vida, Martorell Viu, the Xarxa per una Nova Cultura de l'Aigua (XNCA), Ecologistes en Acció de Catalunya (EEAC), the Grup de Defensa del Ter (GDT), the Moviment Ecologista Sant Feliu (MES), the group Alternativa d'Unitat Popular (AUP) of Rubí and the Societat Esportiva de Pescadors d'Abrera. Also present for the University were the UNESCO Chair in Sustainability (CUS) of the UPC, representatives of the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), as well as two technicians from the Terrassa City Council.

Barcelona’s battle to take its water company back under public ownership is reaching its climax in the courts and at the ballot box.

When the citizen platform, Barcelona En Comú, crowdsourced its manifesto for the Barcelona city elections in 2015, its most popular proposal was to remunicipalize the city’s water company, Agbar (subsidiary of the multinational, Suez Environnement).

Three years on, the government is locked in a struggle for remunicipalization that epitomizes the concerns of the new municipalist movement: protecting the commons, challenging corruption, and harnessing the symbiotic relationship between institutional and non-institutional politics.

The motives for remunicipalization are numerous: a global study by the Transnational Institute in 2015 concluded that towns and cities that remunicipalize their water tend to enjoy increased quality and lower tariffs for consumers. Barcelona is no different; the water rights platform Aigua és Vida estimates that water rates set by Agbar-Suez in Barcelona are 91.7% more expensive than those in neighbouring municipalities that manage their water publicly. This is particularly important in the Spanish context, where 17% of the population suffers from “energy poverty”, meaning that they face hardship in paying their electricity, gas or water bills. In Barcelona, where 10 information points have been set up since 2015 to advise citizens on their energy rights, over 170,000 people have been found to be suffering from this specific kind of poverty.

Economic arguments aside, remunicipalization is also motivated by an understanding of water as a human right and an essential element of ecological sustainability. According to these principles, water should be governed as a commons, that is, owned and managed collectively and democratically by communities, rather than run for profit.

Read more on the website of OpenDemocracy

In 1997, after nearly 40 years of public management of the integral water cycle (1959-1983 municipal provider; 1983-1997 public enterprise), Valladolid City Council granted a concession to Agualid-Aguas de Valladolid, a subsidiary company of Agbar-Aguas de Barcelona (owned by Suez). Thus, water supply (and later wastewater) was privatised until 2017. In 2016, the Valladolid City Council decided to remunicipalise the water supply in the metropolitan area as the private contract was expiring in July 2017.

Read more on the Water Remunicipalisation Tracker

Just one year ago we were arguing about how Spain was still resisting the last wave of water privatization, as a result of austerity policies and debt, seasoned with corruption scandals.

But as a result of the local and regional elections a year ago, the tide changed. As a reaction to the long-term crisis, attacks to public services and corruption in traditional parties, many citizen movements organized to run for the elections, with great success in Madrid, Barcelona, Zaragoza, Ferrol, Santiago, Cádiz, Coruña and Valencia, among others.

One of the key achievements of those movements was to introduce in the public sphere the debate on how to manage public services, like water. By the end of 2015, 57 percent of the population in Spain received their tap water from a private operator. One of the most worrying consequences is that more than 500,000 families receive water cut off warnings every year, according to data from the Spanish public water companies association.

Valladolid, a city of around 300,000 inhabitants and capital of the northwestern region of Castilla y León, took the first big move a few weeks ago. The local government announced that the city would recover public control of water management, 20 years after the privatization of Aguas de Valladolid, when the contract expires in July 2017. Aguas de Valladolid is now part of the AGBAR-Suez group.

Read more on the blog of Food & Water Europe

Brussels, february 2nd 2016

THE EBRO

The Ebro River is the third longest river in the Mediterranean, after the Rhone and the Nile, passing through 9 nine Autonomous Communities before flowing into the Mediterranean Sea where it forms the Ebro Delta (Catalonia).

The Ebro Delta is one of the largest remaining coastal wetlands in Europe. This delta area of nearly 8000 Ha was declared as National Park, recognized as being of International Importance by the Ramsar Convention on wetlands, recognized as Special Protection Area for Birds (SPAB - 79/409/CEE), a Community Interest Area (CIA - 85/337/EEC) and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.

THE PROBLEM

The intense water consumption throughout the Ebro Basin puts the river under strong pressure and affects its ecological functionality. In particular, the Delta is the most vulnerable part of the river, altered by the drastic reduction of water and sediment flows that leads to the subsidence of the whole delta area, currently lowering at a rate of 0,3 cm per year. Climate change projections clearly indicate that this phenomenon, together with the sea level rise, will cause the disappearance of 80% of this territory in the next century.

The water management situation in the region of Catalonia, Spain is catastrophic. The omnipresence of the private water sector is creating hugely negative impacts at the economic, social and environmental levels. As a result, Catalan municipalities are being swept by the wave of water remunicipalisation that is taking place across the globe, and the drive to recover public management of water systems is gaining force.

The Catalan quasi-monopoly in water

The privatisation of water services today affects roughly 84% of the population of Catalonia, through either mixed corporations or fully private companies. This situation is quite unique given that, to the contrary, the great majority of water systems are under public control globally. Furthermore, the region’s water management landscape has two distinctive characteristics.

First, private companies are concentrated in medium-sized and large population centres. Although more than half of Catalan municipalities have public water services (507 compared to 437 where these services are privatised), they only represent 16% of the population. We are therefore talking about small municipalities, where it is hard to benefit from economies of scale and where the return on investments is lower than in the bigger cities where private companies can expect to make profits.

Second, a handful of companies share the water market. For example, 90% of municipalities with private water management are served by companies from the Aigües de Barcelona group that operates in 24 countries – also known as AGBAR and a subsidiary of the French water multinational Suez. Under the AGBAR umbrella we find companies such as the Societat General d’Aigües de Barcelona (SGAB), SOREA, CASSA, Aigües de Catalunya, Mina Pública de Terrassa, Aigües de Girona, Aigües de Tarragona and many more. It is worth noting that AGBAR has managed water in the city of Barcelona since 1867, with the latest change taking place in 2012 when a mixed company was created, under 85% private and 15% public control.

Read more on the website of TransNational Institute

Demonstration in March 30th by the Plataforma en Defensa de l'Ebre (PDE) to reject the Ebro hydrological plan. It will start at 11:30 from Sant Jaume d'Enveja and it will finish in Plaça de l'Ajuntament in Deltebre.

The Spanish Government approved in an incomprehensible way a hydrological plan for the Ebro basin that involves building 43 new dams and 450 000 new hectares of irrigated land (now there are 950 000). The plan doesn't consider impacts of climate change nor the sediment input in the Ebro delta, threatening its survival.

This plan means an infringement of the Water Framework Directive. Catalonian population is invited to the demonstration organized by the PDE to put a halt to this plan.

The neighbors of Alcazar de San Juan have locked themselves inside the city council for 72 hours to demand a binding referendum on water privatization, a proposal backed by 11,000 signatures from a town of 32,000 inhabitants. Despite the outcry, the city council rejected the proposal and tentatively awarded Aguas de Alcázar (the municipal service of water) to Aqualia, a company belonging to the group FCC (Fomento de Construcciones y Contractors) for 25 years.

Despite the decision of the council, which was in favor of privatization due to the casting vote of the mayor (he cast the deciding vote amongst 10 votes against and 10 in favour), the population of Alcazar kept demonstrating on Friday afternoon. More than 5,000 people went through the streets shouting "Yes we can", "If you also take a shower, join the fight", "Water is not for sale, water fights back" or "Ortega resignation". They arrived at the headquarters of Aqualia and read an impromptu statement in which they said that 'the most important thing in this process are not the answers we receive, but the questions we ask" and explained that the mobilization would continue.

The Plateforma contra la privatización del Canal de Isabel II initiated a debate on the water management model of the Canal within the framework of the Campaign for Transparency. They involved organizations, trade unions, 15M assemblies, political organizations and the public to find an alternative model, which could be defended before the current PP government or before future governments.

We, people from the Ebro Delta Region in south Catalonia, would like to invite you to acknowledge and support our campaign to protect our river, its Delta and ecosystems and our livelihoods. The Ebro Delta is one of the most important wetland areas in southern Europe, but is extremely fragile.

We have handed in a Petition to the European Parliament in order to ask politicians to take action against the Ebro River Management Plan which, as it is formulated now, would cause an environmental disaster and the disappearance of 80% of the territory in 50 years.

The Ebro River Management plan draft is affected by economic fraud, technical incoherence and a serious lack of democracy in its elaboration.

Support the fight for the Ebro River Delta!

Sign the petition: http://dmadeltaebre.blogspot.com.es/

THE RIVER

The River Ebro is one of the longest rivers in Spain, with a length of 930 Km and a River Basin of 86,100 Km2. Its source is in Fontibre (Cantabria), and it passes through nine Autonomous Communities before flowing into the Mediterranean sea where it forms the Ebro Delta (Catalonia). It is the third longest river in the Mediterranean, after the Rhone and the Nile. Its ecological richness is recognized at national and international levels. Most of the Delta is a National Park, recognized as being of International Importance by the Ramsar Convention. It is a Special Protection Area for Birds (SPAB - 79/409/CEE), a Community Interest Area (CIA - 85/337/EEC) and, furthermore, it is currently under review to be declared a Biosphere Reserve (UNESCO).