Losses of supplied water reach 26% in the Balearic Islands, 16 points above the ten percent target considered international best practice and one point above the national average.
This is how the report data appears Water in Spain of Oikos, which will be presented this Tuesday and which proposes to create a National Water Authority which leads a new model of governance and faces new climate challenges, weighed down by an annual deficit of 3 billion euros, between 75 and 85% of the country’s infrastructure needs renewal.
In the Balearic Islands, over the last decade, the evolution of water losses has increased by one point to reach 26%. It is estimated that a 18% are real losses and 8% are apparent losses. It is for this reason that among the recommendations contained in the report is the necessary renewal of distribution networks.
However, the level of water reuse is high in the Balearic Islands, which reaches 45% and is positioned as the second autonomous community that recycles the highest percentage of water of the total wastewater after Murcia (91%). This shows that in areas with greater hydrographic stress, such as the Balearic Islands, the volume of reuse is greater, they pointed out.
The entity proposes a profound reform of the governance framework which includes a greater rationalization of powers around waterstrengthening technical capacities and managerial human capital, as well as better coordination between the different levels of government.
This reform, according to Oikos, also involves the modernization and strengthening of hydrographic confederations and the creation of a national fund to modernize the networks, build desalination plantsincrease reuse and advance the promotion of other solutions required by infrastructure.
As they highlighted, the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, both droughts and floods, shows the need to adapt to new water realities that respond to climate change.
In this sense, the co-founder of Oikos and coordinator of this report, Toni Timoner, highlighted that Floods and droughts are “two sides of the same coin when it comes to climate change” and that Spain “has an investment deficit” in hydraulic infrastructure which would allow it to prepare “much better for these increasingly extreme phenomena”.
“In many Hydrological Confederations, the degree of execution of planned investments is particularly low, less than 50 percent, for works and projects identified as critical to mitigate flood risk,” he added, reports Europa Press.
