They warn that the Balearic Islands are losing key control over water in the midst of the aquifer crisis

PalmThe GOB and the Water Alliance have criticized the changes introduced by the omnibus law in urban planning and water management matters, considering that they weaken the environmental control mechanisms over urban growth at a particularly delicate moment for the water resources of the Balearic Islands.

The two entities have warned that the regulatory modification eliminates the obligation to request a water sufficiency report in certain changes to urban planning that already had prior authorization from the hydraulic administration. As they denounce, this measure will allow changes of use, reclassifications, or urban reclassifications to be processed without the supervision that the competent body in water matters has exercised until now.

In these cases, they explain, the town councils will only have to incorporate into the file a justificatory report accrediting that no new demands for water resources or additional purification needs are generated. Environmental organizations consider this requirement insufficient, as it does not provide for any external verification or control mechanism regarding the actual sufficiency of available resources. According to the GOB and the Water Alliance, the reform comes in a particularly worrying context, with nearly six out of ten groundwater bodies in the Islands in a state of overexploitation, pollution, or salinization.

Organizations have also framed this modification within a legislative line that, in their opinion, favors the urbanistic transformation of the territory. In this regard, they have pointed out that the omnibus law is added to the administrative simplification law —currently appealed before the Constitutional Court— and to the regulations on strategic residential projects, which they consider instruments that contribute to increasing pressure on the territory.

The entities have noted that urban growth is intensifying water demand and worsening the situation of the Balearic aquifers. According to them, this pressure translates into increasingly widespread overexploitation and an increase in groundwater contamination problems. Finally, the GOB and the Water Alliance have stressed that urban and residential uses on rural land are currently the main water consumers in the Islands, above the agricultural and industrial sectors, and have called for maintaining and strengthening control mechanisms over the availability of water resources before authorizing new urban developments.