The subsidies will be used to carry out works and actions aimed at repairing water leaks, building new wells and renovating the existing network, among others.
The Department of Economic Promotion and Local Development of the Consell de Mallorca has approved the call for subsidies to the island’s town councils and associations of municipalities that have responsibilities in the area of water so that they can develop projects or actions aimed at guaranteeing the urban supply of drinking water to the population of the municipalities. The amount of the call for proposals is 19,296,000 euros. This was announced by Councillor Pilar Amate during the plenary session of the Consell de Mallorca.
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The Consell de Mallorca earmarks 19.3 million to town councils and associations of municipalities to improve the distribution of drinking water and guarantee its supply
This initiative is part of the agreement of the Pact for Water, signed between the Government and the Consell de Mallorca, which allows for the opening of a specific line of direct aid to the island’s municipalities for the execution of specific projects to reduce the waste of drinking water.
Thus, each municipality will be able to carry out a maximum of two actions, depending on the amount allocated based on proportional distribution of the subsidy based on three criteria: surface area, population and population centres. Thus, each municipality will receive an amount ranging from 170,000 to 562,000 euros, to which must be added another 20,345 euros for each population centre dependent on each municipality.
The president of the Consell de Mallorca, Llorenç Galmés, said that this specific line of aid ‘responds to the need to alleviate the problem of water shortages that many municipalities on the island have because we know that maintaining the existing infrastructures to prevent leaks can save a lot of water that is being lost’.
For her part, the Councillor for Economic Promotion and Local Development, Pilar Amate, explained that for her department ‘granting this aid is a priority, because we are responding to the requests of many mayors who ask us for support to improve their supply networks. This is the first call for applications, but it is planned that each year we will be able to publish one of the same characteristics within the framework of the Water Pact’.
Type of actions to be financed
The specific line of aid establishes that the funds may be used for the following actions: detection and repair of leaks to prevent losses, installation of digital meters, sectorisation of supply networks, construction or extension of regulation devices and associated infrastructures, construction of new wells, guarantee wells and reserve wells and associated infrastructures.
Other actions that may be carried out include the installation, improvement and extension of water purification infrastructures and any other action to increase the guarantee of supply in normal or drought conditions.
Projects will be eligible for funding if they are started and carried out between 28 March 2023 and 28 March 2028, and a technical and legal report is required to determine that the projects presented are eligible for funding by the resolution of the Strategic Tourism Agency of the Balearic Islands (AETIB).
Among the criteria of this call, modifications of actions and the extension of deadlines are allowed as long as they are adequately justified, and, from the moment of the concession, they will have one year to award the projects.