Fines for misusing water in Barcelona

Fines of up to 3000 euros to be imposed for the misuse of water in Barcelona as from today

Wasting water in Barcelona and its suburbs could end up being very expensive as from today due to the fact that La Entitat del Medi Ambient (EMA), an organization that covers 33 districts will start to impose fines on those people who use drinking water to water their gardens or fill up their swimming pools.

Fines of 30 euros are to be imposed for washing your car in the street using drinking water and 50 euros for those who use this resource to water gardens less than 250 m2.

The severity of the sanctions is aimed to be proportional to the size the pool or garden in question. Fines can be up to 750 euros for a minor incident, up to 1500 for a serious misuse of water or up to 3000 for the very serious misuse of water.
If someone who has been fined once continues to misuse water in the same way this would be viewed as a very serious action and their water supplies could be cut off as a result.

Some examples of minor fines apart from washing your car in the street are watering a garden between 250 and 1000 m2 – 200 euros and filling a pool 12m by 6m – 20 euros.

If somebody waters a garden between 1000 and 3000 m2 with drinking water this could result in a fine of 800 euros and filling a swimming pool 12m by 25 m with drinking water could result in a fine of 700 euros.

But the highest fines are reserved for people who water their garden with drinking water if it is more than 3000 m2 – this could result in a fine of 2500 euros. Filling a pool over 52 metres wide could result in a fine of 2800 euros.

It will be left up to each individual town hall to manage the system of fines. Town council inspectors, the local police and the Catalan police, the Mossos d'Esquadra, will be responsible for detecting the inappropriate use of drinking water.

Although the system of fines has only be in place for some hours a case has already been detected in Sant Cugat del Vallès where the town council has discovered a resident filling their own private pool using drinking water. Nevertheless, it is yet to be seen how effective the system of fines will be in helping reduce the consumption of drinking water.

Related: Drought in Spain

Spain protests to British Government over New Flame wreck

The Andalucian regional government to claim ‘New Flame’ clean up operation costs back from EU

The Andalucian regional government is to reclaim the costs of cleaning up beaches affected by the sinking of the cargo ship 'New Flame' from the EU. Manuel Chaves, the president of the Andalucian regional government, has also announced that civil action against the owner of the sunken cargo ship ‘New Flame’ and its insurance company will begin in order to get compensation for money spent from public funds.

According to Cristina Narbona, the Minister for the Environment, the Spanish government has asked to meet with the British ambassador in Madrid to discuss the way the government of Gibraltar dealt with the situation following the sinking last year of the ship carrying scrap metal off the Andalucian coast. Regional politicians have criticised the authorities in Gibraltar over what they regard as delays and slackness in recovering the wreck to avoid further pollution.

Cristina Narbona said that the government of Gibraltar has asked the British government to assume its responsibilities in relation to the new spill from the ship produced this weekend.

Meanwhile President Chaves has announced that the claims for compensation from the EU will begin immediately while the civil action against the ship owner and its insurance company will require more time.

Rising sea levels in the Mediterranean

The level of the Mediterranean sea on the Spanish coast rose on average from 4 to 16 centimetres between 1990 and 2005. Furthermore experts on climate change have predicted that sea levels on the Spanish Mediterranean could rise anywhere between 25 centimetres up to half a metre over the next 50 years if current forecasts on the rise in temperature are accurate.

According to Manuel Vargas the head of research at the Spanish Institute for Oceanography the rising sea levels in the Mediterranean fulfil current predictions for worst case scenarios. The Spanish Institute for Oceanography has been analyzing the evolution of sea levels, temperatures and salinity for the first time using information from scientific observations dating back to 1948.

Vargas also said that predictions on rising sea levels were conditioned by ‘what we do’ in the struggle against climate change. According to the Ministry for Science and Education if current predictions over rising sea levels are fulfilled the consequences for lower coastal areas on the Mediterranean would be very serious and if sea levels were to rise by half a metre which is the maximum predicted then this would have catastrophic results.

The temperature of the air over the Mediterranean and its superficial waters also rose significantly from the mid 70’s onwards. The temperature in superficial waters rose on average between 0.12 and 0.5 centigrade between 1948 and 2005, while in intermediate waters there were temperature rises of between 0.5 and 0.2 centigrade.

The rise in temperature in deeper waters was found to be between 0.03 and 0.1 centigrade. Vargas explained that although these temperature rises appear to be quite low you need to take into account that enormous levels of heat in the air temperature are required in order to produce a rise in temperature in deeper waters.
Data also exists to demonstrate a rise in the salinity of the Mediterranean due to the drop in rainfall and the amount of water flowing into the sea from rivers.
Vargas warned that climate change wasn’t the only human threat to the Mediterranean.

Bill Clinton visits Spain

Rodriguez Zapatero and Clinton make joint statement against Climate Change and Poverty

The Spanish President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, agreed a new phase of collaboration with the Global Clinton Foundation initiative in a meeting with Bill Clinton which took place in the Moncloa Palace on Monday.

In a joint declaration to the press following their meeting which lasted an hour and a half Zapatero said that this cooperation would be ‘extraordinarily important’ although he didn’t give any figures and added that he had asked Bill Clinton for ‘help’ in mobilizing financial resources and citizens to work against the challenges of climate change and the struggle against poverty, especially in the area of education.

Zapatero described Clinton as one of the best presidents that the US had ever had and a great ex-president for his commitment on the most essential issues that confront humanity.

Clinton whose foundation has the capacity to manage a budget of around 30,000 million dollars thanked the Spanish government’s collaboration saying that ‘Spain could serve as an example’ in convincing other nations that the struggle against climate change makes economic sense.

He went on to explain that he was pleased to be working with the Spanish government which was responsible for creating 3 million jobs over the last few years and whose economy had grown by 3.8% and which had become the second largest producer of wind power and had managed to reduce its green house emissions by 4%.

Clinton said that ‘investing in development politics was worth it’ and praised Zapatero’s government for its promise to introduce a law on donating 0.7% of GDP. He also considered that Spain didn’t make empty promises when it came to UN objectives on reducing poverty and hunger by 2015.

After the meeting, Bill Clinton had lunch with King Juan Carlos in the popular Casa Lucio restaurant in Madrid

UN Desertification Conference in Madrid

Today the 8th UN conference against desertification starts in Madrid. The conference will be opened by the Spanish Minister for the Environment, Cristina Narbona and Prince Felipe and will take place in the Spanish capital over 2 weeks. It will be attended by around 2000 people including representatives from 200 countries together with ecological groups and members of other NGO’s.

Desertification affects approximately third of the globe and 1,200 million people around the world.

The main objectives of the conference are to achieve concrete policies and look for new ways of financing work against desertification. It also hopes to get new initiatives towards creating a centre on dedicated to the problem of desertification which will have headquarters in Madrid.

The Canary Islands and the Southwest of the Peninsula face the greatest risk from desertification. According to information from the Spanish Ministry for the Environment desertification threatens around 35% of Spanish territory.

Oil spill reaches Ibiza

10 tonnes of fuel extract from sunken ship near Ibiza – 3 beaches have already been affected

On Wednesday afternoon the merchant ship called Don Pedro left the port in Ibiza on its way to Valencia. However, it didn’t get very far and 10 minutes later it struck a small island called ‘Isla de Daus’ just one nautical mile from the port in Ibiza. Don Pedro was carrying 150 tonnes of fuel and 50 tonnes of diesel oil. The ship took just 30 minutes to sink and fuel started leaking from its hull in several places.

The situation was considered to be so serious that the Minister for Transport, Magdalena Alvarez, returned urgently to Spain from an official visit to Uruguay in order to put into action a rescue and salvage plan.

Nevertheless, 3 beaches on Ibiza have been closed to the public due to contamination by the oil slick and although divers involved in the salvage operation have sealed off the three places where the oil was leaking from they have discovered a broken fuel pipe which is also leaking oil.

The oil slick covers an area 3 miles long and half a mile wide according to Alvarez. The transport minister has announced today that 3,500 metres of anti-contamination barriers have been sent to protect the Ibizan coastline in order to try and prevent further beach closures at the start of the summer holidays.

In a press statement the Transport Minister has explained that this is a very different situation to that of the Prestige oil spillage in which 70,000 tonnes of fuel contaminated much of the Galician, Asturian and Cantabrian coastline.
Unfavourable wind conditions have meant that the oil has not taken long to reach the coast and a clean up operation is now underway on the first contaminated beach. Tomorrow the number of people cleaning the beach will rise from 20 to 50 but so far no volunteers have been called for. Samples for analysis have already been taken from the affected beaches although it is not clear when the results of the will be known.

The president of the Ibizan regional government, Chicu Tarrés, has called for calm and has highlighted the fact that only 500 metres out of a total of 18 kilometres of coastline have been affected.

An investigation by the public prosecutor on the Balearic islands has already been opened in order to find out who is responsible for the accident. The Spanish Civil Guard have been asked to investigate the oil spillage from Don Pedro which belongs to a company called Iscomar given that it could have disastrous consequences for the environment as well as having a serious effect on people’s health.

Related: Guide to Ibiza

Cars with highest CO2 emissions to be taxed in Spain

Before the end of the year car tax in Spain will be increased for the most contaminating cars. The government, the IU-ICV and ERC reached an agreement last week to introduce an amendment to the Law on Air Quality.

The new measure is aimed at making vehicles such as 4 X 4s and USVs (urban sports vehicles) more expensive and making cars with the lowest CO2 emissions cheaper.

However, critics of this measure have pointed out that increasing the price of a vehicle that costs 40,000 euros by 1,200 is probably not going to make much difference in the number of those vehicles used or sold.

In Spain there are very few hybrid cars (those which have a motor that uses both electricity and petrol). Cars which pollute least are the smallest models such as Smart, Peugeot 107 and the Citroen C1 amongst others.

The latest car tax measure is intended to influence young people who are buying their first car. The increase in car tax for first-time car owners who can afford to buy a middle of the range 4X4 would be 1100 euros more.

However the President of the Association for European Car Drivers (AEA), Mario Arnaldo, has asked the government to abolish car tax in order to encourage drivers to buy new cars given that older cars contaminate much more. In his opinion this would be a better way of improving the quality of the air and reducing CO2 emissions given that ‘cars manufactured today contaminate 10 times less than those made 10 years ago’.

Spain criticised for Desalination Plants

World Wildlife Fund Criticises Construction of Desalination Plants in Spain

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has criticised the ‘frenetic construction’ of desalination plants in Spain and their negative impact on the environment and climate change. According to the study Spain has one of the largest capacities for desalination but it has warned that this is not the best way of guaranteeing the supply of fresh water.

The director of the World Fresh Water Programme for the WWF, Jamie Pittock highlighted this week that desalination is a very expensive form of obtaining fresh water and uses a high amount of energy to do so therefore contributing to the greenhouse effect. Furthermore he claims it is destroying the coastline.

The WWF has warned that many countries with water shortages are looking to desalination as a solution to their problems. Among those countries are Australia, the Middle East, the US, Spain and the UK as well as India and China. In all of these countries there are densely populated areas with little or no natural fresh water supplies.

The present Spanish government proposed the construction of desalination plants as a way of tackling the country's water shortage when it cancelled the contraversial Ebro project planned by the previous government and intended to divert fresh water from northern river supplies to other parts of the country.

Related:
Spanish drought

Radioactivity in Huelva, Spain

Radioactivity found to be 25 times above permitted levels in Huelva

According to news reports today, the environmental pressure group Greenpeace will ask the European Parliament to force Spain to officially recognise that two rubbish dumps in Huelva (Fertiberia and Foret) are radioactive areas.

Members of Greenpeace and David Hammerstein, a member of the European Parliament have carried out tests on both sites which demonstrated that levels of radioactivity are more than 25 times above the maximum permitted levels by law.

Julio Barea, a spokesperson for Greenpeace, confirmed that radioactivity levels in Huelva are not comparable to anywhere else in Spain or the rest of Europe. According to Greenpeace prolonged exposure to radiation provokes cancer - Huelva has the highest number of cases of cancer in Spain.

This is bad news for Huelva, as tourism plays a key role in the province's economy and if the local authorities do not act swiftly to correct the situation, the radioactivity could prove to be very detrimental not only to the health of local people, but also to the health of the local economy. Furthermore the Doñana natural reserve is located in Huelva, and is one of the richest natural reserves in the whole of Europe. It is not clear whether or not the radioactivity extends to Doñana.

Related:
Measures to tackle air pollution in Spain