World Bank Water Forum 2002

The Two-Headed Ebro Hydrodinosaur

by

Josep C. Vergés

[email protected] Societat Catalana d’Economia (Institut d’Estudis Catalans)

Washington, D. C. 6-8 May 2002 The Spanish Water Plan, centred on the Ebro as presented here by José Albiac and myself, is composed of two separate transfers from the , one basically for of some 600 kms Southwest to Almeria, famous for the spaguetti 2 westerns that made Clint Eastwood the tallest cowboy since John Wayne, and a relatively smaller potable transfer Northeast of some 200 kms to the Olympic city of . Albiac discusses the irrigated head while I elaborate my demand study for the Barcelona Metropolitan Authority.1 I have also undertaken reports on Spanish irrigation, the Rhone transfer to Barcelona, and Europe’s largest dam, the Alqueva in the Guadiana basin in . 2 Water policy in and Portugal is summarised in my book just issued in Spanish. 3

The Ebro is the longest river in Spain, from which derives the name of the peninsula, Iberia, and flows into the Northwestern Mediterranean, in , in a beautiful delta of rice paddies and bird sanctuaries. Just to scale our American hosts, the Ebro Delta extends 20 miles while the Mississippi Delta would hold half the Spanish Mediterranean coastline. The physical scale may be pocketsized, but Spanish water planning has still all the Mediterranean climate practices of California of yesteryear. The Golden State proved to Hollywood’s satisfaction that water flows uphill to politics, as portrayed in Polanski’s Chinatown, and Spain has a popular saying from the of the Valencia Albufera that water makes you more drunk than wine.

The major transfer, 82% of the water export from the Ebro, is irrigation for which a multilayered subsidy scheme is essential, from ex ante concrete construction with European Funds to ex post agricultural production with the infamous CAP, the Common Agricultural Policy. The Water Plan is now Spanish law but Madrid has still to go cap in hand to Brussels. The underlying subsidies obviate however the 2000 Full Cost Pricing Water Directive of the . The Barcelona branch does not have these subsidy needs being self -financing from consumers if the demand is there, no small matter. As the plan now stands with a single price for Ebro water, there would also be a cross-subsidy from Catalan consumers in the export of Catalan water to Spanish farmers. The Ebro region in particular is in uproar at the betrayal by politicians. The biggest demonstration in water history, with 300,000 (including the Ebro opposition politician, the good-looking journalist from the and myself in mid picture) forced current European Union president José María Aznar to shelve his plea for water subsidies during the Barcelona Summit held the same week of March 2002.4 Uphill Water Politics in the Barcelona Summit

1 J.C. Vergés, Estudi per a la valoració de la millor alternativa de transvasament d’aigua a l’àrea de Barcelona, Entitat del Medi Ambient, Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona 2001. 2 J.C. Vergés “Impact of Water Pricing and Foreseen Impact of the CAP on the Use of Irrigation Water in Spain,” in A. Massarutto, coord., Water Pricing, the CAP and Irrigation Water Use, DG Environment, Brussels 2000; "Demand for Water in the ATLL Serviced Area," in B. Barraqué, dir., Water Demands in Catalonia: A European Perspective on the Projected Rhone-Barcelona Water Transfer, LATTS (ENPC and Université Paris Val-de-Marne) for Ministère de l'Environnement, Direction de l'Eau, Paris 2000; “The Alqueva Irrigation Agreement” Portugal Case Study in CEC, Cooperative Agreements in as an Instrument to Improve the Economic and Ecological Efficiency of the European Union Water Policy, DG Research, Brussels 2001. 3 J.C. Vergés, El saqueo del agua en España, Barcelona: La tempestad 2002. 4 Climate change was discussed instead by the 15 heads of state of the European Union plus 12 Eastern European candidates. The civic organisers of the demonstration held a scientific meeting a fortnight later in the Ebro Delta, boycotted by politicians and government technicians, except José Albiac of the state government, but with the presence among others of distinguished professor John W. Day of Louisiana State University. “Del Ebro al Segura: Planificación Hidrológica y Sostenibilidad,” Fundación Nueva Cultura del Agua, , 22nd-25th March 2002. 3

Spanish water use has little to envy California. Spain is easily the largest consumer per head for all water use in Europe, with ten times the consumption of England or Belgium and two and a half times the European average. Even the so Mediterranean French consume almost five times less (Table 1). Water woes are best viewed from a good sized pork barrel in Spain.

Table 1: European Water Consumption per Head

m3/y per head Index EU = 100 ______

1. Spain 530 256 2. Italy 523 253 3. Portugal 339 164 4. Greece 334 161 European Union 207 100 5. 125 60 6. Finland 89 43 7. Ireland 85 41 8. Denmark 79 38 9. Sweden 71 34 10. Germany 71 34 11. Holland 62 30 12. Austria 58 28 13. United Kingdom 51 25 14. Belgium and Luxemburg 50 24 ______Source: Elaborated from Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, Libro Blanco del Agua en España, 1998. As in California irrigation is at the heart of this major consumption, with 80% of regulated surface water use in Spain. Spain has a varied climate, with a wet Atlantic coast, a large continental regime and the long Mediterranean coastline. These three distinct regions shown in table 2 have large 4 differences in water use and availability. The Atlantic consumes 44% in irrigation, continental Spain, with all the major , including the Ebro, 87%, and the Mediterranean, to which the similar water cycle Canaries is added, 71%. The Mediterranean irrigates three times less in total volume and has four times less resources than continental Spain. 56% of the irrigated area in Spain is for continental crops such as wheat and corn and only 36% for Mediterranean crops such as fruits and market vegetables.5 Surface irrigation is heavily subsidised with basin authorities charging only 15% of real operational expenditure (Table 3 ), so that incorporating the European full cost recovery principle will multiply surface irrigation prices sixfold to cover current budgetary practices. At the European Union Sintra conference, Spanish agriculture officials estimated that one third of irrigation would switch to dryland, up to 634,000 has, which on a European scale is greater than the irrigation of the whole of Portugal.

Table 2: Water Basins in Spain

Source: J.C. Vergés, El saqueo del agua en España, Barcelona: Ediciones de la Tempestad 2002 Table 3: Irrigation Subsidies in Spain

Basin authority Irrigation charges1 Full cost2 Current charges € cents/m3 € cents/m3 as % of full cost

Atlantic 0.1 2 6%

Duero 0.3 4 8%

5 See J.C. Vergés, “Impact of Water Pricing and Foreseen Impact of the CAP on the Use of Irrigation Water in Spain,” in A. Massarutto, coord., Water Pricing, the CAP and Irrigation Water Use, DG Environment, Brussels 2000; tables 2 and 6 with data from Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, Libro Blanco del Agua en España, 1998. 5

Tajo 0.5 4 14% Guadiana 0.5 6 9% Guadalquivir 0.8 4 20% Ebro 0.2 2 12% Continental 0.4 4 12%

South 0.6 4 16% Segura 3 7 48% Xuquer 0.2 5 6% Mediterranean 1 5 26%

Spain3 0.5 4 15% Notes: (1) Confederaciones Hidrográficas and Agència Catalana de l’Aigua in 1999. (2) Current cost of dams over 50 years at 0.5% depreciation and tranfers over 25 years at 1% depreciation, plus each basin’s administration costs. (3) Irrigating 18,778 hm3 at total cost for the basin authorities of € 706 million. Source: Elaborated from C.M. Escartín and J.M. Santafé, “Application of the Cost Recovery Principle in Spain,” European Commission DG XI and Instituto da Água, Pricing Water: Economics, Environment, Society, Sintra, Portugal 1999. Original prices in pesetas rounded to eurocents (€ 1 = 166.386 pesetas.

Table 4: The Water Transfer Plans of 1993 and 2000

Hm3/year 1993 Socialist Plan 2000 Popular Plan % Popular/Socialist Plans

Transfers 2,310 1,000 43% Continental: 985 0 0% -Tajo 535 0 0% -Duero 400 0 0% -Guadiana 50 0 0% Mediterranean: 1,325 1,000 76% -Ebro 1,275 1,000 79% -South 50 - 0%

Beneficiaries Continental 610 0 0% Mediterranean: 1,700 1,000 59% -Xuquer 755 300 40% -Segura 820 420 51% -South 0 100 100% -Catalonia 125 180 144% Source: J.C. Vergés, El saqueo del agua en España, Barcelona: Ediciones de la Tempestad 2002 The Spanish Water plan scales down the failed grand planning of the former socialist government. The major diference shown in table 4 is that the current plan removes all transfers from continental Spain concentrating on the Ebro Delta to pump water along the Mediterranean coastline. The cutback of two thirds in transfers however leaves the Mediterranean where it was, because the Ebro still transfers 79% of the previous plan. Catalonia, the ninth wealthiest out of 200 European regions, loses out with 82% of the Catalan Ebro exported and only 18% available for Barcelona.

The water plan has a dozen pages on urban water economics in contrast to the hundreds on irrigation but agriculture is less than 3% of Spanish value added and 6 irrigation little more than 1%.6 Water demand is not taken in an economic sense:7 “As the quantity of water an economic agent would be willing to buy in a market at a given price. The problem is that water needs at the real cost may not be payable in economic terms. Planned demand are maximum future projections without introducing economic restrictions. Obviously these would limit operations because prices different from current levels would change demand considerably and unsatisfie d expectations would disappear applying a water price." The water plan admits that economic demand is the real demand which it calls solvent: “otherwise complex and costly infrastucture would be built without a reasonable expectation of cost recovery.” This leads to the query whether the planned demand is insolvent. The plan dismisses any impact of prices on urban demand arguing that:8 “Significant price rises do not affect demand, so that it is reasonable to suppose that there are no economic limitations to urban water transfers.”

An urban transfer, however, must be based on some idea of what water demand there is. The only detailed information on Barcelona consumption is for the year 1994 for the Rhone to Barcelona transfer project of two publicly owned companies in France and Spain. Real consumption for 1994 is 143 l/d per household while all existing nine planned estimates overstate current consumption, producing wildly exaggerated end predictions (Table 5). Restating to real 1994 consumption, the planned deficits of Barcelona vanish in five plans and fall to around 50 hm3/year in the latest revisions with a maximum in 2025 of 88 hm3/year. 9 These adapted predictions expose the planned Ebro transfer of 140 hm3/year as oversized, based on a 48% overestimate in consumption per head of 276 l/d, when the only known figure is 186 l/d. The water plan never looks at real data, merely contrasting other predictions. Even population data is withheld thanks to an opportune error that repeats a table.10 Demand growth is explained through substitution of poor quality water or latent demand of 25-54 hm3/year plus real demand growth in ten years of 53 hm3/year and in 25 years of 114 hm3/year for a grand total of 140 hm3/year. But the water plan admits that real demand in Barcelona may actually fall because of uncertainty in the future growth of urban and industrial use. 11 At no point does the water plan prove there will be growth in demand. Tabla 5: Restating Planned Demand in Barcelona hm3/y Plan Year Planned Restated at Correction New planned Demand 1994 base1 in growth 2 growth 3

Pla Hidrològic 1988 511 357 -154 0 Xarxa Primària 1988 474 357 -117 0 Xarxa Primària 1995 576 357 -219 0 Plan Hidrológico 2000 460 357 -103 0 PDAB 2000 366 357 -9 0

6 1.25% according to Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, Libro blanco del agua en España, 1998, p. 520. Urban water economics in the water plan are discussed only in Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, Plan Hidrológico Nacional , Madrid 2000, “Análisis Económicos” in pp. 32, 112-115, 144-147, 150 -152. 7 Ibid, pp. 142-143. 8 Ibid, pp. 151-152. 9 There is still a wildly off mark prediction of 214 hm 3/year growth based on discredited predictions of population growth which will be ignored. 10 Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, Plan Hidrológico Nacional, Madrid 2000, “Análisis de los sistemas hidráulicos.” Page 337 repeats the graph of page 336 so the water plan has no explanation of its prediction of population growth in Barcelona. 11 Ibid pp. 339 -340. 7

Revisió Pla 1995 2002 581 406 -175 49 Pla Hidrològic 2008 819 571 -246 214 Plan Hidrológico 2010 513 398 -115 41 Plan Hidrológico 2025 574 445 -129 88 Note: (1) Real consumption in 1994 = 357 hm3 (2) Difference between restated demand of previous column and original prediction. (3) Difference between restated demand and real consumption in 1994 of 357 hm3. Soruce: J.C. Vergés: Estudi per a la valoració de la millor alternativa de transvasament d’aigua a l’àrea de Barcelona , Entitat del Medi Ambient, Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona 2001.

The Catalan Parliament had earlier adopted an unanimous resolution declaring a hydrodeficit of 300-350 hm3/year and in the short term 100 hm3/year. The surprise is that there is no study backing up this political statement, which the water plan now halves equally arbitrarily. 12 Future demand does not permit big water transfers. A figure of 100 hm3/year is more realistic but does not give the transfer amount because first water saving and subsitution policies must be implemented, such as full cost pricing in agriculture and water reuse so that, as will be explained, at most there is room for a 50 hm3/year transfer, far removed from the grand plans of grand transfers of grand politicians who provoke such grand rejections.

Water use has spiralled in the Ebro as a result of new irrigation (Table 6). The exhaustion of available water is worsened by the irregular nature of the river, both seasonally (Table 7) and over the long term. In fact planned water abstractions from the two transfers would result in a low flow critical situation in the Ebro Delta for almost half the years (Table 8 for the last fifty years). The water plan admits that the economics must be sound but immediately backtracks:13 “Economic viability is independent of who pays, who distributes and who benefits from use. Equity suggests sharing burdens but income redistribution and other non-economic objectives may shift these costs elsewhere.” The water plan admits that full cost pricing will gradually increase water prices and that basin authorities have systematically underperformed in cost recovery, as well as susbsidising arbitrarily. Disappointingly the water plan refuses to apply full cost pricing to irrigation. The reason for this economic allergy is not difficult to discover. At the planned transfer costs of 31-42 eurocents/m3 their own irrigation demand tables show farmers would hardly buy water, except in very localised areas with a demand of only 100 hm3/year, eight times less than the planned irrigation transfer14 (Table 9).

12 Comissió de recursos hídrics, 25th July 2000. Text of the resolution in J.C. Vergés, Estudi per a la valoració de la millor alternativa de transvasament d’aigua a l’àrea de Barcelona , Entitat del Medi Ambient, Àrea Metropol itana de Barcelona 2001, pp. 26-28. 13 M. Medio Ambiente, Plan Hidrológico Nacional, Madrid 2000, “Análisis Económicos,” pp. 18, 37, 42. 14 Ibid. pp. 160-162. Table 40. 8

Table 6: Irrigation Drinks Up the Ebro Irrigated area and net consumption 1900-2000

Source: Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, Plan Hidrológico Nacional, 2000.

Table 7: Seasonal Irregularity in the Ebro Monthly flow yearly deviation with low flow in August

Source: Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, Plan Hidrológico Nacional, 2000. 9

Table 8: Low Flow Crisis in the Ebro Delta

Source: Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, Plan Hidrológico Nacional, 2000.

At the Ebro transfer price in the water plan, irrigation in continental products falls dramatically by 89%, agricultural employment by 39% and profits two thirds, as well as fertiliser use (Table 10).This new infrastructure full cost pricing would lead to massive switch to dryland farming in continental Spain leaving even vaster volumes of water unused. A less dramatic full cost pricing can be applied of 5 to 12 € cents/m3, which reduces irrigation by one third at the lower price with only 2% loss of employment and by half at the higher price with 17% less farm employment. Profits are more substantially affected, but this will always be the case with production overreliant on subsidised water.

In the Mediterranean, where high value produce is preferred to low value extensive farming, the impact of full cost pricing would be minimal. Currently Mediterranean farmers consume almost half their irrigation from private groundwater, for which full cost already applies. 15 There is therefore even less reason to accept the water plan’s selfserving argument that full cost pricing should not apply to the new Ebro transfer. As my co-presenter José Albiac and Javier Tapia argue:16 “Increasing water scarcity is not reflected in the water price. Extremely low irrigation prices encourage waste and prevent investment to increase water efficiency, so that an artificial scarcity develops with rationing and administrative assignation of water. An increase in water prices in accordance with the Full Cost European Water Directive would prevent water scarcity in the Mediterranean at the lowest economic cost.” Their conclusion, unsurprisingly, is that undertaking the Ebro transfer for irrigation would then be quite unnecessary.

15 43% groundwater use in the Mediterranean but only 9% in continental and 7% in all of Spain. The full cost price of 4 eurocents/m3 in table 3 has a zero impact in the Mediterranean. J.C. Vergés, “Impact of Water Pricing and Foreseen Impact of the CAP on the Use of Irrigation Water in Spain,” in A. Massarutto, coord., Water Pricing, the CAP and Irrigation Water Use, DG Environment, Brussels 2000; Tables 9 and 45. 16 J. Albiac and J. Tapia, La gestión de la demanda de agua frente a la política de oferta del trasvase del Ebro, Gobierno de Aragón, Dpto. Agricultura, Doc. de trabajo1/2, Saragossa 2001, pp. 2, 5, 33, 56, 71. 10

Table 9: Irrigation Demand in Five Water Districts and Overall Water price in pesetas/m 3 and consumption in m3/year (€1 = 166.386 pesetas)

Source: Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, Plan Hidrológico Nacional, 2000. 11

Table 10: Impact of Full Cost Pricing Water price Water Gross Labour Fertiliser € cents/m3 Consumption Margin

2 -3% -10% 0% -4% 3 -5% -17% -1% -6% 5 -34% -30% -2% -15% 7 -49% -36% -9% -22% 12 -76% -44% -17% -44% 18 -82% -49% -18% -50% 30 -89% -63% -39% -58% Source: J.A. Gómez Limón and J. Berbel, “Multicriteria Analysis of Derived Water Demand Functions: A Spanish Case Study” Agricultural Systems, vol. 63, 2000.

A water transfer to Barcelona does not have to cover the whole predicted growth in demand because ongoing water policies are having a major impact on supply, of which three will be mentioned here: the Delta aquifer, surface water quality and reutilisation. The Llobregat Delta aquifer is the equivalent of a major dam right where the main consumption is, in Barcelona: The water company Aigües de Barcelona extracts at the aquifer head 157 hm3/year and artificially recharges 25 hm3/year.17 But there is excess capacity today in the aquifer because consumption has fallen from 129 hm3 to 54 hm3, two thirds less in twenty years (Table 11). Urbanisation has shrunk the agricultural area, and hence irrigation, and pollution taxes reduced industrial use significantly, while Barcelona suffers from a rising water table with severe underground flooding requiring pumping in landmark buildings like the rebuilt Liceo opera in the old city Rambles. This very real water, although invisible, the water plan disparigingly calls a fictional dam, admitting grudgingly that it can supply continuously 96 hm3/year, which underestimates current potable use by 40%.18

Water quality is also increasing due to the completion of the sewage treatment plan in Catalonia. Barcelona is supplied with surface water from the Llobregat and Ter Rivers. The Llobregat River was highly polluted but no longer so, with half the length of maximum quality and only 4% low quality (Table 12). Water quality has doubled in twenty years and the past decade fishing increased in Catalan rivers from 150 kms to 1,300 kms thanks to 300 non-industrial sewage plants treating 850 hm3/year. The Llobregat River has a salt problem because of upriver salt deposits, but the Ebro Delta has similar problems so it is not a good substitute for Llobregat water. Reutilisation of water is increasingly available from sewage plants, with 5% reuse compared to 21% in California. The water plan admits water reuse can make available an additiona l 50 hm3/year.19 So there is plenty of supply and demand management that can be undertaken. The reality is that there has never been any water restrictions in Barcelona, a hard fact which belies the scare headlines during the regular in winter and summer of our Mediterranean climate, headlines that vanish like the awful accent in My Fair Lady when the in Spain stays mainly in the plain.

17 J. M. Miralles, L’aigua: desenvolupament i gestió sostenible, Fundació Narcís Monturiol 1998. 18 Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, Plan Hidrológico Nacional, Madrid 2000, “Análisis sistemas hidráulicos,” pp. 329 y 356. 19 Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, Plan Hidrológico Nacional, Madrid 2000, “Análisis de los sistemas hidráulicos,” pp. 341-343. 12

Table 11: The Water Plan’s Fictional Dam

Hm3/year extracted from the Llobregat Delta aquifer 1970-1994

Source: Comunitat d’Usuaris d’Aigues del Delta del Riu Llobregat

Table 12: Increasing Water Quality

kms of Llobregat River BILL Index1 1979 1997

0-1 8% 0% 2-3 13% 4% 4-5 33% 32% 6-7 25% 12% 8-10 21% 52%

Note: (1) BILL is a biological indicator scaled from 0 no presence to 10 maximum presence of macroinvertebrates. Source: N. Prat, A. Munné, C. Solà, N. Bonada and M. Rieradevall, “Perspectivas de la utilización de los insectos como bioindicadores del estado ecológico de las aguas. Aplicación a ríos mediterráneos,” IV congreso argentino de entomolgía , Mar del Plata 1998.

13

Michel Drain of the French scientific committee overseeing the public company BRL project of the Rhone transfer to Catalonia explains the artificial scarcity in the Barcelona area:20 “The coastline is extremely populated with a density of 330 inhabitants/km 2, greater than Belgium! It is not surprising that water demand is very high. What is also true is that water that could be used for urban needs goes to agriculture.” He points out that before transporting water long distances it is best to look for closer alternatives and shows that the Pyrenees have high quality water available at the new Rialb dam just 20 miles from the Barcelona basin but exclusively assigned to irrigation. In fact an old project proposed by regional planner Victorià Muñoz Oms before the 1936 Civil War would transfer from the Noguera Pallaresa and Rivers in the Pyrenees and Ebro tributaries of high quality water with none of the salt problems of the Ebro Delta. The water engineeer survived the Franco dictatorship restating his project in 1957, when he explained that as a early as 1911 Barcelona was complaining of bad quality and future water scarcity.21 His long standing proposal to interconnect the two main Catalan basins was rediscovered by the Catalan minister who wrote the socialist water plan Josep Borrell.22 The current water plan retains this proposal and presents detailed costing for three alternatives transfers to Barcelona: the Ebro Delta, the Rhone and the Noguera Pallaresa.

Table 13: The Water Plan Transfer Options for Barcelona

Noguera Ebro Rhone Investment: 315 hm 3/year € million 216 292 541 Noguera Index = 100 100 135 250

473 hm 3/year € million 311 411 1,059 Noguera Index = 100 100 132 341

Energy Costs eurocents/m3 -0,7 4 6 Noguera Index = 100 100 770 1,120

Source: Elaborated from “Anejo. Costes básicos, análisis económicos” in Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, Plan Hidrológico Nacional, 2000.

20 M. Drain “L’aqueduc Rhône-Barcelone et la politique européenne de l’eau,” Hydropôle, Marseilles 1999, pp. 215, 218 and 220, and “Mediterranean Water: Subsidiarity and Equity,” in B. Barraqué, dir., Water Dem ands in Catalonia: A European Perspective on the Projected Rhone- Barcelona Water Transfer, LATTS (ENPC and Université Paris Val-de-Marne) for Ministère de l'Environnement, Direction de l'Eau, Paris 2000. 21 In fact Franco removed him from office at one point furiously calling him a “dictator”! See F. Ribas, “L’enginyer Muñoz Oms, el darrer regeneracionista,” Revista de Catalunya, Nº 137, February 1999, pp. 54-56. For the restatement of his plan: V. Muñoz Oms, Plan de aguas de Cataluña para el aprovechamiento integral de la región catalana, Ayuntamiento de Barcelona 1957. 22 E. Bayona “Borrell proyecta llevar agua del Noguera Pallaresa a Barcelona” La Mañana, 1995 pp. 1-3. 14

These three alternatives portrayed in the water plan are shown in table 13. The two pipeline/canal options for 5 m 3/s and 10 m3/s or 315 hm3/year and 473 hm3/year are far too big, as argued here, and the distance from the Noguera too great given that water can simply be taken from the Rialb dam adjacent to the Llobregat basin. Even with these unnecessary extra costs the Noguera option is far cheaper than the preferred Madrid government Ebro Delta branch or the Catalan government’s pet Rhone transfer. The Noguera investment costs one third less than the Ebro and is two and a half times cheaper than the Rhone. The energy cost is eight times less than the Ebro and 12 times less than the Rhone. The reason for the even more favourable energy cost is that a relief map comes in handy to a thoughtful planner. The Noguera transfer is all downhill from the mighty Pyrenees and generates electricity for sale (hence the negative number) while both the Ebro and the Rhone transfers require pumping over mountains, which famously crossed with his elephants but hydrodinosaurs must still do. Needless to say water treatment costs are much lower and also environmental risks since both the Ebro and the Rhone transfers are downstream from major nuclear and chemical plants. How come the water plan chooses the Ebro, with the Rhone second best? Planners don’t know how to add or is it that simple sums do not lead to large transfers?

The de -escalation of water transfers from 2,310 hm3/year in 1993 to the current 1,000 hm3/year still overplans. At full cost pricing irrigation demand for Ebro water is no more than 100 hm3/year as the water plan admits while my study shows that Barcelona has more than enough with 50 hm3/year. That is a total of 150 hm3/year, not 1,000 hm 3/year, an 85% downsizing of the double transfer. Dinosaurs downsized into the far more adaptable birds. The two-headed Ebro hydrodinosaur must yet evolve into smaller and more cost effective transfers. I defer to the paleontologists of the future.