“Manacor has normalized for decades a water that cannot be drunk”

Manacor"For decades, nitrates have acted like the dog in the manger, which neither eats the hay nor lets the ox eat it: their presence prevented drinking the water, but the problem was not perceived as urgent enough to mobilize the investments necessary to resolve it." This is asserted by Francesc Grimalt, the manager of the municipal company Serveis de l'Ajuntament de Manacor (SAM), which manages the water supply network. Manacor, with nearly 30,000 inhabitants in its urban center, is considered the most populous city in Spain that still does not have potable water in most of its residential network. Since 2015, work has been underway to modernize the water cycle network to control consumption and reduce leaks, in order to prepare the city for the postponed arrival of potable water to all the taps in the capital of the Llevant region.

The problem, he adds, is that nitrate contamination does not usually generate immediate alarm among the population because it does not obviously alter the taste, color, or smell of the water. "This low perception of risk has contributed to postponing solutions."

For decades, furthermore, the fact that the water was not potable served to keep its price down. Distributing non-potable water served for years to justify low tariffs, which did not allow for the collection of the resources necessary to modernize the network. In March, the City Council initially approved new progressive tariffs, which penalize higher consumption and aim to encourage water savings and ensure greater investment capacity in the service.

Although nearly four decades have passed without the administrations having solved the problem of water that cannot be drunk or used for cooking, Grimalt believes that the solution has never been closer. "It has taken many years to act," he acknowledges. Facing a "manifestly disastrous" situation, the City Council initially opted for an action that would mitigate the consequences while a definitive solution was pending. To succeed in bringing potable water to Manacor, first of all, it was necessary to have a well-sectorized, renovated, and controlled network, with fewer leaks and fewer possibilities of contamination. It is precisely on this modernization that SAM has been working since 2015.

During the 2019-2023 term, the municipality launched a pilot water treatment plant based on a large-scale osmosis system. This facility allowed for the opening, starting in 2021, of the city's first public drinking water fountains and the supply to two sectors of the urban network. Currently, the plant supplies five public fountains, about 470 homes –approximately 1,500 people– and one public school. In total, it represents about 450 meters out of the 11,240 the city has: nearly 4%.

The rest of the population continues to receive water that is not suitable for drinking or cooking. The fact that an essential good is not guaranteed constitutes, in the words of Grimalt, “a catastrophe from the point of view of regulations”, which has been "normalized for decades even though it cannot be drunk". However, after so many years, this situation “is quite integrated into the daily functioning” of the city.

Meanwhile, the City Council's plans to build a water treatment plant for the entire city were frustrated in April 2025, when the Directorate General for Water Resources warned the municipality that it would not authorize the infrastructure, which was planned for that same year. The argument: the arrival of high-level water supply scheduled for 2028.

Chlorinated water

This normalization poses a paradox: what happens if, after decades of investment, drinking water reaches every home, but the population continues to buy bottled water? “If a city council makes enormous investments and applies a notable increase in tariffs to provide drinking water, but it still tastes of chlorine, this humble technician has reached the conclusion that the day it is served to the whole city it could end up being a political failure,” he warns.

Grimalt refers to Spanish health regulations, which require guaranteeing the disinfection of water distributed through the network. Usually, this disinfection is carried out through chlorination, which protects the water from possible contamination throughout the entire journey to the taps, but also gives it a characteristic taste.

For practical purposes, he maintains, the population ends up choosing between tap water, which tastes of chlorine, and bottled water. “It is a battle that is lost from the moment we are not talking about conditions of strict survival,” he states. Even if the network water is sanitarily safe, a significant part of the citizenry may continue to choose to buy it because they prefer its taste.

According to Grimalt, in Northern European countries, supply networks have management and health control systems that allow for reducing the use of chlorine, using other treatments, or, in certain circumstances, distributing water without residual disinfectant. This makes tap water have more pleasant organoleptic characteristics and results in much lower bottled water consumption. “In Northern Europe, nobody pays for water that has qualities similar to what they already receive at home,” he summarizes.

Grimalt maintains that European standards are progressively advancing towards this model, but warns that health regulations and, above all, the management of networks in Southern Europe still have a long way to go. For this reason, he considers that the challenge for Manacor does not consist solely in ensuring that the water meets sanitary limits, but also in offering a product that citizens want to drink.

First the nitrates; then, the lime and the chlorine

Improving the quality of Manacor's water will have to be addressed in stages. The first step will be to reduce the concentration of nitrates to below the legal maximum of 50 milligrams per litre. This could be achieved by mixing water from municipal wells with resources from other locations, either through the future connection to the high-capacity water network or with the contribution of a possible desalination plant on the Migjorn coast.

“It is a matter of many-decade horizons,” points out Grimalt. In a first phase, the mixture would allow nitrates to be lowered to levels compatible with regulations.

Once nitrates are reduced, the other two major quality challenges will emerge more strongly: lime and chlorine. The arrival of desalinated water could reduce the hardness of the water distributed in Manacor. This would mean a tangible improvement for citizens, because many households have had to install domestic water softeners to protect pipes and household appliances.

These devices also increase water consumption during cleaning and regeneration processes. When they do not receive proper maintenance or stop being used, they can even become a significant source of losses. For this reason, Grimalt argues that reducing lime would not only improve the perceived quality of the water, but would also contribute to reducing its consumption. This improvement could be achieved both through the incorporation of desalinated water and with specific hardness treatment systems. The final challenge would be to reduce the taste of chlorine without compromising health safety.

Three open fronts

The improvement in quality must be accompanied by a containment of demand. Manacor distributes an average daily volume of between 6,000 and 6,400 cubic meters of water. “It is very frustrating that we are not managing to reduce this volume despite the efficiency improvements,” acknowledges Grimalt. Nevertheless, SAM does not consider that there is widespread abuse, because overall consumption has remained relatively stable for years.

Water policies, he argues, must reduce the allocation per inhabitant. Manacor could move, for example, from consumption close to 200 liters per person per day to a target of about 125 liters. But this individual reduction may be canceled out if the population to which service must be provided continues to increase.

“The primary factor is the amount of population,” he warns. Even if a considerable decrease in consumption per inhabitant is achieved, the total volume will grow again if the city goes from the current 30,000 inhabitants to 50,000 or 60,000. And this, he reminds us, is not a factor that depends exclusively on the water administration, but also on urban planning and territorial policies.

The solution, therefore, requires acting simultaneously on three fronts: securing new sources of supply, modernizing the network, and containing global demand. Only in this way will the arrival of drinking water be able to represent a lasting solution and not a provisional step within a problem that Manacor has been dragging on for four decades.