The one-handed economist

Judy writes*

The new year held an awful surprise for many Casablancans: overflowing sewage flooded the streets for several days after heavy rains in the first days of January.

Heavy rains are not a new phenomenon in this city, yet climate change is likely to increase their intensity and frequency and growing urbanization challenges current water systems. The water damage is high and the performance of sewage infrastructure low, citizens are rightfully upset – the question is who should they aim their anger at?

Casablanca’s water systems are managed by the private company Lydec on behalf of the City Council. This delegation and its oversight are formalized in a delegation contract. According to this contract, Lydec alone is in charge of sewage management, and most residents are happy to join in blaming Lydec for the failure.

The City Council shared this opinion and hence summoned Lydec to an emergency meeting only a few days after Lydec’s specialized workers and engineers swarmed the city to help people and clean up the disaster.

However, Lydec’s CEO Darriet responded to the ubiquitous cross-fire by claiming that the utility company did not receive sufficient funding to improve the water infrastructure over the last decade, which is additionally strained by boosting population growth. He referred to a flooding disaster prevention plan to strengthen sewage infrastructure, which the company had previously conceived together with the City Council.

Concretely, they had agreed on a joint investment of 17bn Dirham (€1.5bn). Lydec has come up for its due share of 5bn (€0.46bn), but the City Council has fallen short of investing the other 12bn (€1.1bn) so far. Lydec also pointed out that since it became Casablanca’s utility provider in 1997, the company has made cumulative investments of 26bn Dirham (€2.4bn), almost half of which went into sewage infrastructure.

Further, the regulatory responsibility lies with the City Council, which thus needs to question its own role in the disaster, concerning sloppy oversight and especially chronic underfunding. Indeed, said delegation contract seems to be in dire need of an update, filling gaps and using clearer language when it comes to determining responsibilities. A contract revision has been in planning since 2016, yet without success so far.

After the emergency meeting with Lydec, the City Council set up a special committee tasked to follow up and evaluate the causes of the recent sewage system failure, and renewed its pledge to revise the delegation contract.

Lydec at its part, is trying to restore its damaged image and ease the concerned public by pointing at several current and new sewage restauration projects, partially aided with government money, to be completed before end of this year still.

What shall we make of this situation? It that neither of the actors are without fault. There appears to be a serious problem with transparency around this delegation contract (it is hardly accessible at full length for the public), which is not helpful to resolve the responsibility dilemma, let alone to delivering the residents of Casablanca their due functional, future-proof water and sewage system.

We cannot tell yet what the investigative commission will conclude, whether Lydec’s advertised infrastructure projects are really going to be finished by the end of the year, whether the contract will actually be reformed and if so, how, or how much the City Council will invest in infrastructure in the coming period.

What we do know is that effluent management is by far not the only problem Casablanca has to deal with: drinking water provision is high on the (financial) agenda, so high that the government started to construct a 10bn (€0.92bn) desalination plant just to provide for its ‘economic capital’.

The municipality’s priorities are visible in public money flows, and understandably, providing freshwater may be most important. However, instead of spending millions on desalination, the city might rather invest in wastewater recycling, killing two birds with one stone: improving sewage infrastructure and procuring drinking water at the same time.

Bottom Line: Watch what happens as Casablanca addresses scarcity. Citizens should demand a functional, efficient water system. Outsiders can learn from this case.

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* Please help my Water Scarcity students by commenting on unclear analysis, alternative perspectives, better data sources, or maybe just saying something nice 🙂

Zayane writes*

The effects of climate change are already manifesting themselves in the dense and urbanized coastal city of Marseille. Due to its characteristic Mediterranean climate (hot and dry summers and cool and wet winters), Marseille is vulnerable to heatwaves, drought, fires, acute rains and storms [pdf]. Scientists forecast that with climate change, extreme weather events will increase in both frequency and intensity [pdf]. Marseille will have to grow into an adaptable and resilient city to preserve its water resources.

To most, water in the «Rhône-Méditerranée» appears abundant. The population of Marseille proudly claim they have the best water of France. The Durance and the Verdon rivers are the principal sources of the city’s water. The canals of Marseille and Provence transport water to Marseille.

Research reveals an absence of flood risk awareness in Marseille. This finding is surprising if we take into account the upsurge in flooding episodes due to increasing urban planning and soil impermeability (as pictured).

Marseille regularly experiences excess rainwater runoff after heavy rain due to its dense industrial and urban landscape. Concrete, tar and other impermeable surfaces prevent rainwater from infiltrating the soil. Fifty-five percent of rain collects as runoffs in urban areas, compared to 10% in natural areas.

Rainwater that cannot infiltrate to complete its natural cycle is captured and channeled through pipes. The consequences are worse air pollution and urban heat islands in the city.

Most rainwater is mixed into the wastewater system, which concentrates rainwater and overwhelms the system in heavy rains. The Géolide plant treats 60% of the city’s wastewater, but it rejects excess water into the environment when it is overwhelmed. A large retention basin was commissioned to collect excess water.

Excess runoffs threatens residents, increases maintenance costs and harms the environment. Municipalities regularly close beaches due to runoff.

Marseille’s drainage system is not suited for climate change. Urban planners and water managers are working to retain water in the city using floodable sports fields, permeable parking, and green roundabouts.

Bottom Line: Marseille’s drainage system is not suited for climate change and the extreme rains it brings. Instead of building expensive, inflexible retention basins, the city should work to increase infiltration everywhere.

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* Please help my Water Scarcity students by commenting on unclear analysis, alternative perspectives, better data sources, or maybe just saying something nice 🙂

Maud writes*

In 2014 UN experts declared that the water crisis in Detroit, Michigan violated human rights of citizens as one expert noted that the “[d]isconnection of water services because of failure to pay due to lack of means constitutes a violation of the human right to water and other international human rights.” Since the bankruptcy of the City of Detroit in 2013 around 100,000 houses have been shut-off from their water supply. Households were shut off if residents had bills two months overdue or were more than $150 in debt.

The municipal bankruptcy in 2013 led to ‘state-directed emergency management’ which translated in the attempt to collect debt from the poorest residents while ignoring to collect larger debts from commercial companies (Ponder & Omstedt, 2019). Additionally, a “special purpose government” was started to manage the water supply and aging infrastructure. According to a paper on the water crisis, the Detroit Water and Sewerage department was responsible for the water service in Detroit and surrounding areas before 2014 and still remains the owner of the infrastructure, however the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) leases, operates and decides on the water system for forty years. The establishment of the GLWA led to the privatization of the water service in Detroit. According to the same paper, this led to the isolation of one single problem, in this case the water supply, while ignoring the connectedness to other issues the community faces, such as poverty and racial injustice. Additionally, many members of the Authority were appointed by counties and the governor of Michigan, moving away from the interests of the city’s citizens. Many of the appointees that run the city of Detroit are state appointees, meaning they will be less concerned and connected with the issues in Detroit as they may have different concerns and interests. According to another report this also reduces the influence of Detroit’s citizens on long-term decisions that could improve the future of the system.

The underlying causes of the water crisis in Detroit arose due to the continuous population and economic decline (Gaber et al). As of 2016, Detroit has the highest rate of poverty in the USA out of any major city, with around 35.7% of its residents living in poverty. Accompanied by an increasing price of water service, this combination led to the water crisis Detroit was and is currently facing. The increasing water price can be attributed to ageing infrastructure (some of it 100 years old), which frequently fails and is expensive to repair. According to Sabourin (2016), the population decline also contributes to the high prices, as the cost of maintaining infrastructure built for 1 million+ citizens is now shared among 680,000 residents.

To address the crisis, Sabourin suggests involving citizens in decision-making and addressing inequalities. One solution is to elect “water-service” representatives to address issues and the sources of problems.

Bottom Line: The conditions that led to the water crisis in Detroit can be attributed to poor water management, poverty, high water prices, and the lack of representation of the people of Detroit in the decision-making process.

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* Please help my Water Scarcity students by commenting on unclear analysis, alternative perspectives, better data sources, or maybe just saying something nice 🙂

Cerys writes*

Adelaide has always had problems with water security, ever since its establishment by British settlers in 1836. In the mid-19th century the growing population came to the realisation that the small Torrens River couldn’t fulfil Adelaide’s rapidly growing demand for water. Although reservoirs were built, Adelaide’s water supply still couldn’t cope with the increasing demand. So in 1955 Adelaide started to pipe in water from the Murray River (over 60 kilometres away), but this was a temporary solution.

The use of the Murray River has now become a source of contention and Adelaide is once again on the search for a new, sustainable source of water. In 2012 the South Australian government constructed a AU$1.83 billion-dollar (€1.18 billion) desalinisation plant in Lonsdale, just south of the city. It has the capacity to produce 100GL of clean water per year. In 2019 the South Australian government decided to increase water production at the desalination plant to 40GL of water per year in aid of drought relief. This figure may rise to 60GL in 2021.

Although this may seem like a solution to water scarcity, this plan has three large problems;

1. The plant doesn’t have the capability to produce enough water to satisfy Adelaide’s water demand. At the moment Adelaide’s desalination plant supplies around 4% of Adelaide’s water demand, but even if the plant is running at maximum capacity (100GL per year), this would only satisfy half of Adelaide’s water demand. Therefore, Adelaide will be forced to continue using unsustainable, alternative water sources such as the Murray River.
2. Desalination is expensive! According to SA Water’s 2016 report, water costs AU$0.95/m3 (€0.61) to produce in Adelaide’s desalination plant. This is more than 9 times the global average for ground water extraction. Because of this, the South Australian government is unwilling to make desalination the main source of water in Adelaide because it’s economically unsustainable.
3. Desalination has negative environmental impacts. Desalination plants require the burning of fossil fuels for energy, and they produce brine as a by-product that may harm marine organisms and coastal water quality. Since the negative environmental impacts of water extraction from the Murray River is one of the reasons why Adelaide wants to reduce its reliance on the Murray, it doesn’t make any sense to switch to desalination instead, as that also damages the environment.

Adelaide will not be able to rely on desalination to quench its increasing thirst, so What’s the solution? Should they focus on recycling waste water or fixing leaks or lowering demand through price increases? In reality, this question is very difficult to answer and I’m sure that if there was one simple solution, Australia would already be doing it.

Bottom Line: Desalinisation is not a permanent solution to Adeaide’s water scarcity.

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* Please help my Water Scarcity students by commenting on unclear analysis, alternative perspectives, better data sources, or maybe just saying something nice 🙂

Maria writes*

The Metropolitan City of Milan lies in the middle of the Po Valley, enclosed by the Ticino and the Adda rivers on its western and eastern sides respectively, and by the southern Alps on the north. Its whole region is characterized by the presence of smaller rivers, streams, and canals, which used to dominate also in the city center’s landscape up until 100 years ago (cerchia of navigli). Today, the canals of the city center are mostly buried underground to give space to motorized mobility, but water abundance is still typical of the urban area. Indeed, Milan lies on top of on of the largest Italian aquifers, which expands throughout the Po Valley and which made large scale agriculture and intense industrial development possible in this region.

The citizens of Milan started to get their drinking water from the aquifer below the city during the 19th century, concurrently with the public interventions to seal up the old canals, which were a threat to public health, promoting the spread of pathogens and epidemics. Since the second half of the century, the aquifer has been the only source of water for the city and its management has been assigned to the public utility Milano Metropolitana (MM) Spa since 2003. MM is run as a private corporation, but it is legally public as it is wholly owned by the municipality of the City of Milan. Additionally, it is regulated by the public authority Ufficio d’Ambito (ATO), which decides which tariffs to impose and which utility to entrust.

MM does not have problems in the extraction and provision of high-quality drinking water, given the local abundance of the resource. However, rising groundwater is increasingly causing floods and water infiltration in the underground structures of the city. The ground water table (i.e., the distance between the ground level and the underground water body) in Milan’s region has been steadily rising since the early 90s, now creating severe threats to several underground structures as for example the four metro lines. The ground water rise has been attributed to the economic system change that characterized the city of Milan during the 80s. Indeed, the city went from being a predominantly industrial urban area, to having an economy based on third sector services, which drastically reduced the water demand from the aquifer, earlier dominated by industrial use.

The recent groundwater rise, combined with the increase in (extreme) precipitation events due to climate change, require innovative management solutions to avoid continuous flooding and infiltration events, which are damaging and costly. Additionally, the rise in groundwater also poses the threat of contaminating the aquifer, since it encounters chemical elements which are more present in the upper strata. Because of such contamination, drinking water extraction already takes place at deeper levels of the aquifer, which are more pristine. Milan has the luck of having a reliable water source, therefore its protection and sustainable management should be of primary concern for the local authorities.

Bottom Line: Water abundance does not necessarily mean absence of water conflicts

References

• La Direzione Acquedotto svolge attività di approvvigionamento, trattamento e distribuzione dell’acqua ad uso potabile nella città di Milano
• STATUTO MM SPA
• The groundwater rise in the urban area of Milan (Italy) and its interactions with underground structures and infrastructures
• Groundwater level evolution in the Milan area: natural and human issues [pdf]
• Analysis of groundwater environment change in the Milan Metropolitan area by hydrostratigraphic, groundwater quality and flow modeling [pdf]

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* Please help my Water Scarcity students by commenting on unclear analysis, alternative perspectives, better data sources, or maybe just saying something nice 🙂