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

Systems Analysis of Zaragoza UWS
Guillermo Penagos
must work together to make clear not just this aspect, but in general all matters
related to groundwater planning and management.
Concerning the indicators not related to water withdrawal but to water pollution.
Zaragoza city introduced WWT between late 1980s and early 1990s in order to
minimize pollution loads to the Ebro River. This time period was not analyzed here. If
the time horizon were expanded over two or three decades it would become evident
that the city reduced has reduced its oxygen demanding loads to the Ebro River.
However there are yet several environmental burdens that require attention
regardless the compliance with local and national regulations.
During the time period of the present study the consumption of energy and chemical
products, as well as the pollution loads to the Ebro River and the atmospheric
emissions have remained more or less constant. Optimizing the water system to
reduce such environmental impacts should be expressively included within the goals
for water management. To become sustainable WWT systems have to evolve from a
reactive approach aimed to remove environmental pollutants to process optimization
where the focus is cycling materials as well as saving energy (Lundin & Morrison,
2002).
5.4 Sustainability vision
Zaragoza has committed to a list of environmental goals derived from the Aalborg
summit for sustainable European cities. This work suggests seven of such goals to
be specifically included as environmental goals for the urban water system. In order
to do so, the whole Zaragoza sustainability vision has to be adjusted to the SMART
principle: Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic and Time bound
(Assinmacopoulos, 2007). This principle was implicit in the goal for reducing water
withdrawal and it showed to be very successful.
Setting sustainability goals would also require setting action priorities. From the
results presented here it is possible to conclude that energy consumption and its
indirect impacts on atmospheric emissions would be a priority, specifically for WWT
system. Technical options for optimization should be explored by the municipality.
But due to time constraints, such options where not explored by this research work.
However a follow-up to the National Plan on Energy would provide some hints about
how to reduce the atmospheric emissions derived from electricity production. Since
this resource is subjected to an open market dynamics, the municipality could
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