Redrawing the Hydrosocial Cycle Through Treated Wastewater Reuse in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona
March, Hug (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)
Gorostiza, Santiago (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut d'Història de la Ciència)
Saurí i Pujol, David (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Geografia)

Fecha:	2023
Resumen:	Increasing economic, social and environmental limits to the development of conventional water supply sources have shifted water resource frontiers to alternative sources, most notably desalination and wastewater reuse. In the past few years, critical scholarship has been prolific in its exploration of how desalination may redraw the hydrosocial cycle in different geographies; wastewater reuse, however, has received much less attention. In this article, we aim to contribute to a critical exploration of the implications of different types of wastewater reuse for urban purposes. We do so through an examination of the case of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB), an area with a fragile water supply system that has been undergoing a harsh drought in 2022/2023. We examine two examples of how treated wastewater may enter the residential sphere. The first involves the reuse of greywater for toilet flushing in residential buildings. The second is linked to the possibilities that advanced treatment of wastewater open up in terms of making urban water systems more robust and more resilient to recurring droughts; this advanced strategy enables both the bolstering of indirect reuse of reclaimed water for potable purposes and direct reuse through the development of dual networks of supply in new urban areas. In this paper, we attempt to unravel the different economic, social, environmental and political implications of those interventions through the lens of the hydrosocial cycle and resource frontiers. We triangulate a critical review of policy documents with informal conversations with policymakers and, in one of the case studies, previous research.
Ayudas:	Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2021/SGR-00975 Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2021/SGR-00214
Nota:	Altres ajuts: EU-Next Generation and Ministerio de Universidades de España (Maria Zambrano grant 2022)
Derechos:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra, i la creació d'obres derivades, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials i que es distribueixin sota la mateixa llicència que regula l'obra original. Cal que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Lengua:	Anglès
Documento:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Materia:	Greywater recycling ; Hydrosocial cycle ; Indirect potable water reuse ; Metropolitan Area of Barcelona ; Resource frontiers ; Spain ; SDG 6 - Clean Water and Sanitation ; SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities
Publicado en:	Water alternatives, Vol. 16, Issue 2 (2023) , p. 463-479, ISSN 1965-0175

Adreça alternativa: https://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/alldoc/articles/vol16/v16issue2/702-a16-2-5/file

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