In recent days, some councils have expressed complaints about the lack of response to their requests for financial assistance to the Catalan Water Agency (ACA) to carry out improvement works in water supply networks. On Tuesday, to answer all these questions, the General Mandate approved an increase from 90 to 200 million euros in aid allocated to the local world to deal with drought, with investments focused on more responsible use of water.
Climate Action Advisor David Mascourt explained that 880 applications from more than 700 localities had already backlogged. For this reason, the item allocated to repair water leaks in municipal networks will become 120 million euros and not 50 as planned. The government was forced to increase the budget by 140% to meet the high demand.
The other aid that will be doubled is to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change, and its budget will now reach 80 million euros, double what was planned. “We will respond to all requests in the coming weeks. We have not postponed anything. We are simply increasing the budget so that we can help everyone,” Mascourt said.
Specifically, the council member stated that they would respond to requests related to the submitted project that could be implemented. In other words, councils must explain in the application what they intend to fix and how.
In parallel, the Drought Control Authority continues to advise municipalities to develop drought emergency plans. These documents must be utilized to provide as much as possible when this phase is announced, as is expected in the first week of February.
With these extensions, the government has already added nearly €560 million to deal with the drought situation since the activation of the Special Drought Scheme (PES) in September 2021. In many cases, these funds have helped support farmers with crop failures. losses.
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