Palma City Council will have its own desalination plant. Driven by Emaya, the installation will cost around 135 million euros, according to the sustainable water management plan project. This facility, which is planned for the year 2035 and will have a maximum capacity of up to 36 cubic hectometers (hm3) per year, is proposed as an "structural pillar" to guarantee supply. The action aims to respond to the water shortage that water resource technicians of the Government anticipated in their reports on the General Plan of Palma in 2023.

MÁS por Palma has accused the People's Party of "privatizing" the public sector following a €1.3 million contract to outsource the drafting of reports for the Balearic Government's Directorate General of Water Resources. The eco-sovereignist party believes this decision represents mismanagement of public funds and weakens the administration. According to the proposal the party will present at the Palma City Council meeting, the management of files related to urban planning and the public interest should remain in the hands of public employees to guarantee impartiality, transparency, and legal certainty. The party demands that the resources allocated to this contract be used directly to strengthen the workforce. According to their calculations, the €1.3 million could be used to hire up to 25 specialized technicians, with salaries above the industry average.

"The mayor of Palma will have to answer for any disasters that may follow." building in flood-prone areas"With this warning, Neus Truyol, spokesperson for MÉS per Palma in the Palma City Council, criticized the City Council's strategy on Thursday.eliminate prior authorization from the General Directorate of Water Resources of the Government to expedite the granting of building permits.

The water war continues in Palma. For the moment, Jaime Martínez's City Council has managed to avoid the preliminary reports from the Directorate General of Water Resources that prevent it from issuing building permits. The official argument is that there is a monumental backlog, which municipal sources have estimated at 500 files. Thus, the City Council emphasizes that projects to address the housing shortage have not been approved due to what it describes as a bottleneck in the Water Resources department. However, according to data consulted by ARABalears, the majority – up to 80% – of the projects that must be approved by the Directorate General are for detached houses. According to official figures, Palma does not have 500 pending applications, but rather 118. As already mentioned, the majority of these are for single-family homes, according to data from the Balearic Government. Thus, it could be concluded that the Palma City Council's Urban Planning Department is requesting permission from the regional government, regarding water resources, to build detached houses. In all cases, the procedure is carried out because the proposed construction site is a flood zone, and regulations require a ruling from the water authority.

The Government has put out to tender a contract worth 1.3 million euros to outsource the drafting and processing of reports for the Directorate General of Water Resources With the aim of streamlining procedures, especially those related to housing construction projects, the decision comes at a time of intense pressure from the development sector, which has been complaining for months about delays in water impact reports. These delays are hindering the granting of licenses and the start of construction in a context of soaring demand for housing. The President of the Balearic Government, Marga Prohens, defended the measure in Parliament a week ago, asserting that it reflects the Executive's commitment to addressing administrative bottlenecks. "Our government program pledged to tackle these bottlenecks," she reminded the assembly, also highlighting decisions made at the beginning of the legislative term with the same objective. In this regard, Prohens cited the elimination of the Balearic Environmental Commission, which placed environmental impact assessments in the hands of technical experts rather than a politically appointed body. According to the president, this reform has allowed for an 82% increase in the pace of reports in the first year and a 36% increase in the second. "If it's yes, it's yes; if it's no, it's no, but now in a more agile, more objective, and more rigorous way," she stated. Now, the focus is on Water Resources, a department that, according to the Government, had accumulated delays of up to three and a half years when the legislature began. The Executive maintains that activity has doubled in two and a half years, partly due to the increase in files resulting from measures approved to promote affordable housing, such as the conversion of commercial premises, limited-price developments, and new public housing projects. Complaints from developers

The reality is that developers have lodged complaints with the Government because, on the one hand, regulations and solutions are announced, but on the other, construction projects are not moving forward. The developers' complaints have reached the Consolat de Mar (the seat of the Balearic Government), where the decision has been made to outsource the reports. Government sources anticipate criticism regarding a lack of oversight and assure that "all authorizations will be signed and reviewed by the Administration, as expected." The decision, therefore, is not without debate. Outsourcing reports in such a sensitive area as public water resources—key in a territory with limited resources and subject to intense urban development pressure—is seen by some sectors as a double-edged sword. While it may help shorten deadlines and unblock projects, it also raises questions about public oversight, the uniformity of criteria, and the Administration's capacity to supervise the work commissioned to external companies. Declarations of responsibility

The Government asserts that it has increased resources, modified the internal structure—creating a specific service for managing public water resources and another for planning, works, and maintenance—established different processing queues according to the type of file, and reinforced the teams with support from Tragsa. It has also promoted electronic administration and processing through self-declarations in cases where regulations allow. According to Prohens, these measures have reduced the backlog of files by more than 50%. However, the Government believes they are insufficient to handle the current volume and anticipates that outsourcing will further boost processing. The outsourcing announced by the Government is thus part of a broader administrative reform strategy aimed at reducing processing times and facilitating economic activity, especially in the housing sector. The fundamental question is to what extent this streamlining can be reconciled with maintaining guarantees in the management of a strategic resource like water, which is currently in a critical situation in the Islands.

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Sóller City Council has updated its measures for water conservation and responsible use and has also imposed restrictions on tourist establishments. Initially, the regulations only reported restrictions for individuals, but this Thursday they issued an updated decree detailing several measures that directly affect hotels, vacation rental homes, bars, restaurants, and cafes.

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The regional government will not modify the aquifer situation parameters of the demand units, in this case the Plan, to declare the emergency situation by municipality rather than by demand unit. This way, the regional government could justify paying the Mancomunidad for truckloads of water, which cost more than €500,000 each year. On the other hand, the Regional Ministry of the Sea and the Water Cycle has committed to launching a subsidy before the end of the year so that the Mancomunidad's towns can meet the additional costs of purchasing water to supply Porreres, Algaida, and, above all, Montuïri.

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The Department of Water Resources and the Nature Protection Service (Seprona) of the Civil Guard carried out the first of a series of operations throughout the summer to pursue large consumers who extract significant amounts of water without authorization. As a result of the collaboration between the two agencies, last week an illegal well was closed at the Cap Menorca rural hotel, in the former military batteries of Llucalari (Alaior), where up to 40 tons of water were being extracted without permission per day.

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