Systems Analysis of Zaragoza Urban Water - SWITCH - Managing ...

Systems Analysis of Zaragoza UWS
Guillermo Penagos
Otherwise it won’t be possible to monitor the trends of the system towards
sustainability.
6.7 Priorities for urban water sustainability would be: 1) continuing on reducing
water withdrawal and unaccounted for water, 2) optimizing energy consumption
and its indirect impacts on atmospheric emissions 3) reducing phosphorus loads
to the Ebro. The impact of heavy metals and other persistent pollutants also
deserves attention since such impact is not necessarily linear to the scale of
loads. Storm water does not seem to be a major problem for Zaragoza, but the
results presented here are not reliable enough. Further studies concerning this
matter are required.
6.8 Major drivers for water management in Zaragoza are population increase,
National Policies on water and environment and climate change. Combined
effects are expected to worsen problems of water management for Zaragoza in
the future.
6.9 Water from the new source, the Yesa reservoir will be able to fulfill Zaragoza’s
water requirements during the next 50 years, even under worst possible scenario
for climate change and irrigation. However in the future might experience some
negative changes on water quality. Ebro River will be even more unsuitable for
drinking purposes. Therefore Zaragoza will have to completely relay on the Yesa
reservoir to fulfill its water demand.
6.10 Comprehensive strategies to cope with such problems are to be set by all
important stakeholders in Zaragoza and the SWITCH project would contribute
with important initiatives to the process. The parameters presented here as
sustainability indicators will contribute to assess the success of the set strategies.
70