"We are privatizing aquifers and socializing the cost of desalinated water"

PalmaThe environmental organization Terraferida considers that the debate on water in the Balearic Islands cannot be limited to the construction of new desalination plants, as the Government proposes. Its spokesperson, Jaume Adrover, maintains that the problem is older: the territorial model has allowed for decades for dispersed urban growth and housing on rural land to increase pressure on aquifers, which are a public good. "I don't know of any place on the planet where such an abusive consumption of water is made as here due to chalets on rural land," states Adrover, who links this situation with the expansion of single-family housing outside urban centers.

According to the spokesperson for Terraferida, groundwater masses, which are public in nature, have ended up fueling an increasingly extensive residential model and, therefore, the increases in subsoil water extraction are not caused by more agricultural activity but by more construction and leisure activities. "What has happened is that these public water masses are, de facto, being exploited by private homes, while the institutional response is to build more desalination plants," he points out.

In various reports, ARA Balears has documented how some owners, mainly foreigners, buy farms and process their 'preferred' farmer status because it grants the possibility of extracting water from the subsoil, even if the property is located in areas with little water. "If they are in red zone areas, which means the aquifer is in a bad state, water extraction permits are not granted unless you are preferred or priority. That's why there is so much tension over water, because some want to obtain agricultural use but in reality they don't have it," explains an Agriculture technician who requests anonymity.

An unsustainable model

Adrover maintains that this implies transferring the cost of a model he considers unsustainable to the whole society. "We give away a public resource like aquifers for free, and when it's no longer enough to supply the municipalities, we all end up paying for desalination plants that are very expensive to build, to maintain, and that also produce much more expensive water," he states.

For Terraferida, the debate is not just economic, but also about territorial model. The entity argues that desalination should be a complementary resource and not a consequence of having exhausted underground reserves.

Furthermore, Adrover warns of another aspect that he considers worrying: the relationship between urban development and water availability. As he explains, until now new developments had to prove water sufficiency to guarantee supply. With the legislative changes promoted by the Government, however, he believes that this requirement is weakened. "The message is that, if there is no water, we will make it with desalination plants. That is, if there are no resources, we will build anyway," he laments. In his opinion, this approach turns water availability into a secondary issue and eliminates one of the main environmental limits to urban growth.

Terraferida argues that the Balearic Islands should prioritize aquifer recovery, limit new intensive consumptions, and consider available water as a prior condition for any urban development, rather than a problem to be solved later with new infrastructure.

The vineyard as a pretext for entry

For Terraferida, the pressure on the water resources of the rural world cannot be separated from the change of uses that the Mallorcan countryside has undergone in recent decades. The entity's spokesperson, Jaume Adrover, warns that certain figures linked to agricultural activity have become a way to cover projects that, in reality, have a more residential than productive logic. "Many of these vineyards and olive trees do not have an agricultural orientation, but are a complement to large chalets. They serve to disguise as agricultural projects those that are truly real estate," he points out.

Adrover focuses especially on the proliferation of new vineyards and olive plantations associated with high-value homes. According to his explanation, these crops, which in principle could represent an opportunity to recover agricultural activity, in some cases function as an element of property revaluation.

"If a villa costs three million euros, with a vineyard it can be worth four, and with an olive grove, five," he summarizes. In his opinion, the value is not so much the agricultural production as the set of associated projects: residential construction, wineries, olive mills, and tourist experiences linked to the product.

For Terraferida, this phenomenon shows a paradigm shift: the agricultural landscape ceases to be just a production space and becomes a real estate and tourist asset. "Agriculture is being used as a real estate asset and as a tourist asset. The value is not the vineyard or the olive tree itself, but the associated constructions," Adrover defends.

Thus, Terraferida poses a contradiction: while administrations are promoting new supply sources to guarantee water for municipalities, a part of the territory continues to increase private demand on underground resources. Precisely, the Government has prepared a profound modification of the Agrarian Law, but has not yet approved it as a bill to send it to Parliament.