Water with pesticides not suitable for consumption: summer in the towns of Salamanca and Zamora (or the tails of the water*)

Without drinking water and with about 40 degrees in the shade. It is not a town in the African desert. They are the inhabitants of 160 towns in the northwest of Salamanca and the south of Zamora who have been like this for almost three weeks, when they received the notice that the water coming out of the tap was contaminated with pesticides.

Twice a week, without fixed days, a tanker truck arrives at the fronton of Saldeana, one of the affected towns. And around him several neighbors with carafes are concentrated.

Resigned, they tell how they live these days, with a population tripling, due to their children, grandson and nephews who come from Bilbao, San Sebastián, Madrid, Barcelona or Salamanca capital to spend a few days in town.. More people than ever and hotter than ever, too. And with tap water not suitable for human consumption.

The number of neighbors affected? Well, although there is no official calculation, taking into account the census and the increase experienced by these populations in summer, the figure between the two provinces can reach around 50,000 people.

Álvaro Vega opens the family bar on these dates. When she found out that she had to prepare the coffees and make the ice in the machine using the water from carafes, “she almost gave me something,” she confesses.

It is not for less. The whole daily routine gets very complicated and it is not easy to get used to. Aitor Apraiz, his wife, Irma García, with their three children, their parents and his brother's family spend three weeks of their vacation here, like every year, and they admit that they have had to throw away the food, already made, in more of an occasion.

“I put the lentils to soak the day before and then I cooked them with the tap water, without realizing it. So, when I fell, well I threw them all away. You're not going to risk it…”, says Apraiz, a cook by profession and in charge of helping his mother-in-law prepare meals in the summer.

Well no, you're not going to risk it. Although from the health center they give a message of tranquility. “For this water to affect health, continuous and long-term consumption is needed. In addition, with levels of contamination much higher than those we have at the moment. And, in any case, the manifestations in health would be in the very long term,” replies the doctor who consults in the towns of the area once a week and prefers not to appear with his name.

The origin of the water contamination is in the pesticides that are used in the agricultural exploitations that reach the flow of the Tormes river due to the drag effect of the rain.. The problem has been detected in the La Almendra reservoir on the Tormes, which is located between the municipalities of Salamanca and Zamora.

All the towns of the Cabeza de Horno commonwealth drink from the waters of the reservoir and from there came the health alert, which reached the mayors of the affected charro municipalities.

The statement signed by the president of the Commonwealth of Cabeza de Horno on July 20 warned that the value registered in the water for pesticides was 0.062 micrograms per liter, above the 0.5 micrograms per liter allowed and, much higher at 0.03 that is established for the herbicide metolachlor.

In addition, in the same statement, they acknowledge that despite the adoption of preventive and special measures at the Drinking Water Treatment Station (ETAP) “they have not been able to correct the incident” in its entirety. And it is that at the beginning of this year a royal decree came into force that revised the presence of metolachlor admitted in water for human consumption, which fell from 0.1 micrograms per liter to the current 0.03 micrograms/l, as a ceiling.

Julia doesn't understand anything about metolachlor, but she does understand bread and sweets. He has been “all his life” in charge of the bakery and hostel in Aldeadávila de la Ribera, another town with contaminated water. She is 80 years old and this story brings back distant memories to her. Or not so far.

“What if I remember when there was no running water!? Of course, how can I not remember. We had to go wash at the well, so yeah. Life has changed a lot in 30 or 20 years.”

So this setback in the comforts assumed in your business translates into “a lot of work, a lot more work.”

“Now, we go with the car full of 25-liter canteens to a pillar where water runs and is good. The pharmacists here have analyzed it and they have told us that yes, we can use it. and so we are. They already say that there is little left, that things are going very well,” says Julia.

Recent water measurements give residents of the affected municipalities cause for hope. The problem is close to being solved, because metolachlor levels have dropped to 0.035 micrograms per liter, close to 0.03, which is the permitted limit.

The water cistern arrives at Saldeana. A quarter of an hour has been advanced, but people are already waiting with their bottles. Some bring them in wheelbarrows, others in the trunk of the car. It's eleven in the morning on a Friday. There are people, yes. For a town with less than a hundred registered inhabitants, this is a festival.

“When does it come back here again?”, the neighbors ask Francisco Sistiaga, the driver of the truck that bears the sign of the Fire Department and the Salamanca County Council, who are the ones that provide this service.

In three or four days he will return with the 28,000 books from his tanker truck, which started at seven in the morning and with which he hopes to travel between eight and ten towns. “I do about 200 kilometers a day. Anything”. He usually ends at five or six in the afternoon, “with the cool,” he says ironically.

While the neighbors make quick and wet relays to place their bottles on the truck's taps, Sistiaga is concerned about how the journalist is going to headline this information.. *”Pon, the tails of the water. That would be a good title,” the man suggests (and we listen).. It has been three weeks providing water for drinking and cooking to the villages in this corner of the province of Salamanca.

With less humor is Pedro Martín Casado, mayor of Saldeana. The situation is prolonging and the mayor has his neighbors in mind, especially vacationers. “They pay for the water service all year round and now, when they come to town to enjoy their vacations, they can't use it.”

He also wants a 2,000-liter mobile deposit to be installed in the town “that the Provincial Council has placed in neighboring municipalities, such as Barruecopardo,” says Martín Casado. And if, in addition, they informed him better and in a more timely manner on how the water measurements are evolving, then he could better understand what is happening and explain it better to his neighbors, as he confesses.

He has tried with letters to those responsible, in Cabeza de Horno, but they come to tell him that they do not know more than what he tells him. Thus, he has to settle for the “one day to the next” notice of the arrival of the tanker truck in Saldeana. He is also confident that the situation will return to normal in a short time.

But, let no one feel sorry for the residents of Saldeana and its surroundings. There is no drinking tap water, but at night you can sleep, because it refreshes. Although the last heat wave has held the thermometers above 20 degrees longer than usual once the sun has set, in the end, the degrees fall below that minimum threshold to reach a restful rest.

The pleasant weather is noticeable every night on the terrace of Álvaro's bar, where he debates passionately about the trifles of a life without drinking water. And it is that there is a question that has divided the town: brushing the teeth with tap water or with water from the carafe.

“Overall, if you're going to spit it out,” say some. “Yeah, but you have part of it,” respond others. Everyone, of course, while they drink their beer, because you can't drink it like water…. And there is no discussion there.