With rainfall increasingly scarce, irrigating crops can be a major challenge, but farmers in southeastern Spain have long relied on recycled wastewater in a model that is winning attention abroad.
“Here the water is still dirty ... but by the end, it will be crystal clear and bacteria-free,” said Carlos Lardin, operations manager at Esamur, the public body overseeing wastewater management in the Murcia region.
At his feet, brownish water bubbled in a desilting tank, the first step before being sifted, filtered and then biologically treated to give it “a second life,” the 45-year-old engineer said.
Photo: AFP
Twenty-three years ago, Murcia — an arid region with chronic water shortages that claims to be the EU’s leading producer of fruit and vegetables — set itself a huge challenge of reusing wastewater to irrigate its crops.
To that end, the region built a network of 100 treatment plants that process and disinfect water from the sewage system so it can be reused on the fields.
This treatment, which involves sand filters and ultraviolet rays, ensures that the water “is not contaminated” and does not transfer bacteria “such as E coli” to the fruit and vegetables, Lardin said.
As a result, about 98 percent of the region’s wastewater is reused today, compared with an average of 9 percent across Spain and 5 percent across the EU, government data show.
It is an important contribution given that the central government has recently restricted Murcia’s huge water transfers from the Tagus River, whose levels have been dropping dangerously.
Esamur said that 15 percent of the region’s irrigation needs are met by recycled wastewater.
It is not enough to cover the need, but it is still important, said Feliciano Guillen, head of the Ceuti irrigation organization, which allocates water resources among farmers in northeastern Murcia.
Farmer Jose Penalver, who owns 10 hectares of land in the hills above Campos del Rio, agreed.
“Whatever [water] can be collected is good wherever it comes from as long as it’s put to good use,” the 52-year-old apricot grower said.
In his fields, an automated drip-irrigation system lets him limit water use to what is strictly necessary, in this case, two hours per day.
“Without this [recycled] water, everything here would dry up,” he said. “Every drop counts.”
Evidence of this growing interest has been seen in Murcia, where in the past few months, “many foreign delegations have come to see our facilities,” Lardin said, pointing to visitors from as far afield as Argentina and Bolivia.
It is usually a serene two-and-a-half-hour ride on Japan’s famously efficient bullet train, but on Saturday, the journey quickly descended into a zombie apocalypse, with passengers screaming in terror. Organizers of the adrenaline-filled trip, less than two weeks before Halloween, touted it as the world’s first haunted house experience on a running Shinkansen. On board one chartered car of the Shinkansen, about 40 thrill-seekers were ready to brave an encounter with the living dead between Tokyo and the western metropolis of Osaka. The eerie experience was inspired by the hit 2016 South Korean action-horror movie Train to Busan, in which a father and
IRANIAN THREATS: Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami said that it would be a ‘mistake’ for Israel to attack Iran and if it did ‘we will strike you again painfully’ Israel yesterday bombed a Syrian coastal city, while the US conducted multiple strikes on targets in Yemen nearly a month into Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza all belong to the so-called “axis of resistance” led by Iran, which on Oct. 1 conducted a missile strike on Israel. Israel has vowed to retaliate for the strike. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami yesterday said in a speech that Tehran would hit Israel “painfully” if it attacks Iranian targets. “If you make a mistake and attack our targets, whether in the region or in
NEW RECRUITS: A video released by Ukrainian officials allegedly shows dozens of North Koreans lining up to collect military fatigues from Russian servicemen Russian aerial strikes wounded more than a dozen and knocked out electricity for tens of thousands of Ukrainians overnight in attacks on residential areas as temperatures dropped toward freezing, Kyiv said yesterday. Ukraine also said it had targeted a crucial Russian explosives factory, about 750km from the border, in an overnight drone attack, while Moscow said it had shot down 110 drones, the largest attempted aerial barrage by Kyiv in more than two weeks. At least 17 people were wounded in an attack on Kryvyi Rig, Ukraine, including a first responder, the Ukrainian State Emergency Service said. “At night, the enemy attacked Kryvyi
The space rock that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period caused a global calamity that doomed the dinosaurs and many other life forms, but that was far from the largest meteorite to strike our planet. One up to 200 times bigger landed 3.26 billion years ago, triggering worldwide destruction at an even greater scale, but as new research shows, that disaster actually might have been beneficial for the early evolution of life by serving as “a giant fertilizer bomb” for the bacteria and other single-celled organisms called archaea that held dominion at the