Authorities in a Mallorcan town are putting restrictions in place that will cut off water for 17 hours of the day, amid a months-long drought and pending an influx of summer visitors that threaten to exhaust the stricken supply. Meanwhile, local businesses, have expressed their “concern” about the measures, which they say will have a “significant impact” on operations.
Bathed in water?
Banyalbufar is a small ancient town of around 600 inhabitants. It perches high atop Mallorca’s steep and rocky northern coast. For a place whose name means “bathed in the water”, it has suffered an ironic number of water shortages. Ongoing since this spring, measures to combat the problem have included work on the municipal pipeline and limiting the supply during certain periods of the day.
In May, dry conditions created what Banyalbufar’s mayor Eleonor Bosch called a “critical situation, with the town reliant on water trucks and tankers to back up the supply while they await a new well to complement the reservoir, which is running lower than minimum levels. In response, officials cut the water supply to rustic areas for five hours in the middle of the day, from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm.
They also capped water consumption at 75 litres per inhabitant per day, and prohibited cleaning terraces, refilling swimming pools and water tanks, and watering plants.
“An extreme emergency”
Despite those actions, two months later the town is now in “an extreme emergency situation”. A statement put out by Joan Vives, deputy mayor, explained that “budgetary instability” meant “the tankers can no longer guarantee us the minimum supply of water to supply the growing population of summer where consumption is increasingly high.”
As a result, from 15 July 2024, in addition to the other prohibitions, the water supply will be cut off between not from 11 am, but from 11:OO pm through to 4:OO pm the next day, meaning residents will only be able to access water for seven hours every evening.
Business organisations such as the Mallorca Association of Bars, Restaurants and Cafeterias (CAEB Mallorca Catering) and the Balearic Islands Catering Business Federation (Ferib) have demanded “urgent solutions” to the issue which they say will lead to “a considerable decrease in the income of local businesses, generating serious economic damage”.
While the bodies expressed thanks for the “efforts” of the local authorities, they are now calling on the Balearic island’s government to intervene. Suggested ways forward include using the island’s Sustainable Tourism Tax (ITS) or eco tax “to provide economic aid or to finance tankers with desalinated water” to avoid “an economic loss for both restaurateurs and residents of the area,” they said.
