Drought Forces Spain to Source Drinking Water From the Sea

BARCELONA—Fill a glass with tap water in Barcelona these days and one-fifth of it will be processed seawater. Another fifth will be treated wastewater derived from toilets, showers and other urban uses.

This mix is emerging as the drinking water of the future in Mediterranean countries. The region is becoming warmer and drier more quickly than most places on Earth, forcing people and governments to act faster here than elsewhere to find new freshwater supplies.

A prolonged drought in Spain’s region of Catalonia is prompting rapid change. For many years after Barcelona’s Llobregat desalination plant opened in 2009, it was little used, contributing less than 5% of the city’s drinking water, which is mostly supplied by reservoirs and groundwater. Since last summer, the plant has worked at full throttle, producing over 500 gallons of fresh water per second.

“The population is increasing, business activities are increasing but water is somewhat decreasing,” said Samuel Reyes, director of the Catalan Water Agency. “We need to change the way we think about water.”

In countries around the Mediterranean Sea, recurrent droughts and dwindling flows of water from mountains into rivers are leading to a re-engineering of the water infrastructure. Farmers are digging more and deeper wells, and often switching to crops that need less water. Governments from Spain to Israel to Algeria are investing massively in desalination plants and looking for supplies of fresh water farther afield.

In the Italian region of Puglia, local authorities want to build a €1 billion, 100-kilometer underwater pipeline—not to carry oil or natural gas but drinking water. The planned project would bring river water across the Adriatic Sea from Albania to Puglia, the parched heel of Italy’s boot.

Puglia has no major rivers or snow-capped mountains. For now, the region is making the most of the little water it has. Local authorities are spending some €1.7 billion, equivalent to $1.9 billion, to repair and replace leaky water pipes, through which some 48% of drinking water there is lost.

“We need new infrastructure, but we also need to rethink our approach to the water we have,” said Francesca Portincasa, the head of Acquedotto Pugliese, the operator that oversees water management in Puglia.

Puglia’s infrastructure plans include building several new wastewater treatment plants and Italy’s first major desalination plant for drinking water, one of three that Puglia aims to operate by the end of the decade.

The changing climate is affecting the Mediterranean in ways beyond droughts. In a region where roughly 150 million people live close to the coast, rising sea levels are threatening homes, businesses and cultural heritage sites.

From sand barriers of Egypt’s Nile Delta to floodgates that protect Venice, projects to keep the sea from swallowing the land are multiplying. Some scientists are beginning to consider ideas once dismissed as crackpot, such as damming the Strait of Gibraltar to keep sea levels in check.

Much of the Mediterranean region has been in the grip of a fearsome heat wave in recent weeks, raising mortality rates and putting pressure on overstretched healthcare systems, with the elderly especially at risk. Cities such as Barcelona and Nicosia in Cyprus have set up public shelters to protect people from prolonged exposure to high temperatures.

Declining access to fresh water poses one of the region’s biggest long-term threats.

Desalinated seawater has long been a prime source of drinking water in hot, dry countries such as Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Now, desalination is booming in countries whose landscapes provided plenty of fresh water for thousands of years.

There are downsides to desalination. Turning seawater into drinking water is an energy-intensive process, which makes desalination both costly and bad for the environment. The super-salty brine that is left over is harmful to the ocean’s ecosystem.

Spain is betting heavily on the technology. Building new desalination plants is the centrepiece of the Spanish government’s plan to deal with the growing problem of droughts.

In Catalonia, authorities plan to double desalination capacity over the next three years. Last year, the region’s two desalination plants produced 16.7 billion gallons of drinking water, six times as much as in 2009. That water has helped the region to cope with this summer’s extreme heat and drought. In the past, Catalonia has had to resort to extreme measures such as importing drinking water on tanker ships.

The Llobregat desalination plant is one of Europe’s largest. Seawater reaches the plant from a pipeline that stretches some 1.3 miles into the sea. Then, it is pumped into tanks where coagulants are used to remove grease, seaweed and other substances. The water then goes through two filters to remove smaller impurities.

Finally, it reaches the heart of the plant: a maze of green, blue, yellow and pink pipes where the salt is separated from the water through reverse osmosis. The whole process takes about 5½ hours.

“There are people here 24 hours a day,” explained Laia Hernández, a representative of the Barcelona plant, during a recent tour of the facility. “Now that we are working at full capacity, maintenance work has to be done quickly.”

The desalinated water flows to a drinking-water treatment centre, where it is mixed with other water supplies, such as water from reservoirs and treated wastewater.

European Union rules say treated wastewater shouldn’t be used in drinking water. To get around that, Barcelona’s treated wastewater is discharged into a river before being extracted again downstream.

Rainfall has been so sparse that the Sau Reservoir, one of Catalonia’s biggest, was only 6% full earlier this year. A medieval church, submerged when the reservoir was created in the 1960s, resurfaced. Fishermen were deployed to remove and euthanise the fish left stranded.

The economic effects of drought are felt most strongly in agriculture. This spring was the hottest Spain has ever recorded, and one of the driest. Farmers were hit especially hard. Insurance payouts to Spanish farmers totalled €772 million in the first half of 2023, exceeding the overall payments for last year as a whole, according to Agroseguro, which handles crop insurance payouts. The overwhelming majority of farmers in Spain are covered by crop insurance, which is subsidised by the state and gives payouts to farmers if their harvests are damaged by events such as extreme weather or disease outbreaks.

Scientists at Catalonia’s Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology are trying to help farmers adapt, including how to optimise the use of a declining water supply.

“Our goal is to produce more food with less water. If we can’t manage that, we will have a problem feeding our population in the future,” said Joan Girona, a water expert at the institute. In one research project, the soil humidity of apple orchards in Catalonia is regularly monitored to determine exactly how much water they need. During the recent drought, Girona advised some farmers to pick unripe fruit, reducing the amount of water the trees need to survive.

In the Catalan countryside, some 70,000 hectares of farmland used to grow cereals and fruit rely on a 200-mile irrigation network known as the Canal D’Urgell.

In April, for the first time in its 160-year history, the canal stopped supplying irrigation water. “I couldn’t believe it,” said Sergi Balué, 45, a farmer who relies on water from the canal for most of his fruit production. “From that point on, there was a lot of uncertainty and fear.”

Worried that his pear orchard wouldn’t survive the spring, Balué did what generations of farmers have done before him: He asked a water diviner for help.

Armed with a Y-shape rod, the dowser surveyed the land and indicated a spot on the cracked earth beneath which he said he sensed water. After digging for 100 meters but finding no water, Balué gave up.

Balué is trying to adapt to water scarcity by collecting more rainwater in small reservoirs. He is also rethinking what crops to grow.

“I used to have only peaches here,” Balué said on a sweltering afternoon as he stood in the middle of an almond grove. Almonds, he explained, are more drought-resistant than flat peaches.

“The thinking is: Even with less water, here I can have something to harvest,” he said. “But it makes me feel sad because in this land we have always only grown peaches, pears and apples. Almond trees just aren’t the same.”

—José Bautista contributed to this article.

PARIS —Paris has long been a byword for luxurious living. The traditional components of the upscale home, from parquet floors to elaborate moldings, have their origins here. Yet settling down in just the right address in this low-rise, high-density city may be the greatest luxury of all.

Tradition reigns supreme in Paris real estate, where certain conditions seem set in stone—the western half of the city, on either side of the Seine, has long been more expensive than the east. But in the fashion world’s capital, parts of the housing market are also subject to shifting fads. In the trendy, hilly northeast, a roving cool factor can send prices in this year’s hip neighborhood rising, while last year’s might seem like a sudden bargain.

This week, with the opening of the Olympic Games and the eyes of the world turned toward Paris, The Wall Street Journal looks at the most expensive and desirable areas in the City of Light.

The Most Expensive Arrondissement: the 6th

Known for historic architecture, elegant apartment houses and bohemian street cred, the 6th Arrondissement is Paris’s answer to Manhattan’s West Village. Like its New York counterpart, the 6th’s starving-artist days are long behind it. But the charm that first wooed notable residents like Gertrude Stein and Jean-Paul Sartre is still largely intact, attracting high-minded tourists and deep-pocketed homeowners who can afford its once-edgy, now serene atmosphere.

Le Breton George V Notaires, a Paris notary with an international clientele, says the 6th consistently holds the title of most expensive arrondissement among Paris’s 20 administrative districts, and 2023 was no exception. Last year, average home prices reached $1,428 a square foot—almost 30% higher than the Paris average of $1,100 a square foot.

According to Meilleurs Agents, the Paris real estate appraisal company, the 6th is also home to three of the city’s five most expensive streets. Rue de Furstemberg, a secluded loop between Boulevard Saint-Germain and the Seine, comes in on top, with average prices of $2,454 a square foot as of March 2024.

For more than two decades, Kyle Branum, a 51-year-old attorney, and Kimberly Branum, a 60-year-old retired CEO, have been regular visitors to Paris, opting for apartment rentals and ultimately an ownership interest in an apartment in the city’s 7th Arrondissement, a sedate Left Bank district known for its discreet atmosphere and plutocratic residents.

“The 7th was the only place we stayed,” says Kimberly, “but we spent most of our time in the 6th.”

In 2022, inspired by the strength of the dollar, the Branums decided to fulfil a longstanding dream of buying in Paris. Working with Paris Property Group, they opted for a 1,465-square-foot, three-bedroom in a building dating to the 17th century on a side street in the 6th Arrondissement. They paid $2.7 million for the unit and then spent just over $1 million on the renovation, working with Franco-American visual artist Monte Laster, who also does interiors.

The couple, who live in Santa Barbara, Calif., plan to spend about three months a year in Paris, hosting children and grandchildren, and cooking after forays to local food markets. Their new kitchen, which includes a French stove from luxury appliance brand Lacanche, is Kimberly’s favourite room, she says.

Another American, investor Ashley Maddox, 49, is also considering relocating.

In 2012, the longtime Paris resident bought a dingy, overstuffed 1,765-square-foot apartment in the 6th and started from scratch. She paid $2.5 million and undertook a gut renovation and building improvements for about $800,000. A centrepiece of the home now is the one-time salon, which was turned into an open-plan kitchen and dining area where Maddox and her three children tend to hang out, American-style. Just outside her door are some of the city’s best-known bakeries and cheesemongers, and she is a short walk from the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Left Bank’s premier green space.

“A lot of the majesty of the city is accessible from here,” she says. “It’s so central, it’s bananas.” Now that two of her children are going away to school, she has listed the four-bedroom apartment with Varenne for $5 million.

The Most Expensive Neighbourhoods: Notre-Dame and Invalides

Garrow Kedigian is moving up in the world of Parisian real estate by heading south of the Seine.

During the pandemic, the Canada-born, New York-based interior designer reassessed his life, he says, and decided “I’m not going to wait any longer to have a pied-à-terre in Paris.”

He originally selected a 1,130-square-foot one-bedroom in the trendy 9th Arrondissement, an up-and-coming Right Bank district just below Montmartre. But he soon realised it was too small for his extended stays, not to mention hosting guests from out of town.

After paying about $1.6 million in 2022 and then investing about $55,000 in new decor, he put the unit up for sale in early 2024 and went house-shopping a second time. He ended up in the Invalides quarter of the 7th Arrondissement in the shadow of one Paris’s signature monuments, the golden-domed Hôtel des Invalides, which dates to the 17th century and is fronted by a grand esplanade.

His new neighbourhood vies for Paris’s most expensive with the Notre-Dame quarter in the 4th Arrondissement, centred on a few islands in the Seine behind its namesake cathedral. According to Le Breton, home prices in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood were $1,818 a square foot in 2023, followed by $1,568 a square foot in Invalides.

After breaking even on his Right Bank one-bedroom, Kedigian paid $2.4 million for his new 1,450-square-foot two-bedroom in a late 19th-century building. It has southern exposures, rounded living-room windows and “gorgeous floors,” he says. Kedigian, who bought the new flat through Junot Fine Properties/Knight Frank, plans to spend up to $435,000 on a renovation that will involve restoring the original 12-foot ceiling height in many of the rooms, as well as rescuing the ceilings’ elaborate stucco detailing. He expects to finish in 2025.

Over in the Notre-Dame neighbourhood, Belles demeures de France/Christie’s recently sold a 2,370-square-foot, four-bedroom home for close to the asking price of about $8.6 million, or about $3,630 a square foot. Listing agent Marie-Hélène Lundgreen says this places the unit near the very top of Paris luxury real estate, where prime homes typically sell between $2,530 and $4,040 a square foot.

The Most Expensive Suburb: Neuilly-sur-Seine

The Boulevard Périphérique, the 22-mile ring road that surrounds Paris and its 20 arrondissements, was once a line in the sand for Parisians, who regarded the French capital’s numerous suburbs as something to drive through on their way to and from vacation. The past few decades have seen waves of gentrification beyond the city’s borders, upgrading humble or industrial districts to the north and east into prime residential areas. And it has turned Neuilly-sur-Seine, just northwest of the city, into a luxury compound of first resort.

In 2023, Neuilly’s average home price of $1,092 a square foot made the leafy, stately community Paris’s most expensive suburb.

Longtime residents, Alain and Michèle Bigio, decided this year is the right time to list their 7,730-square-foot, four-bedroom townhouse on a gated Neuilly street.

The couple, now in their mid 70s, completed the home in 1990, two years after they purchased a small parcel of garden from the owners next door for an undisclosed amount. Having relocated from a white-marble château outside Paris, the couple echoed their previous home by using white- and cream-coloured stone in the new four-story build. The Bigios, who will relocate just back over the border in the 16th Arrondissement, have listed the property with Emile Garcin Propriétés for $14.7 million.

The couple raised two adult children here and undertook upgrades in their empty-nester years—most recently, an indoor pool in the basement and a new elevator.

The cool, pale interiors give way to dark and sardonic images in the former staff’s quarters in the basement where Alain works on his hobby—surreal and satirical paintings, whose risqué content means that his wife prefers they stay downstairs. “I’m not a painter,” he says. “But I paint.”

The Trendiest Arrondissement: the 9th

French interior designer Julie Hamon is theatre royalty. Her grandfather was playwright Jean Anouilh, a giant of 20th-century French literature, and her sister is actress Gwendoline Hamon. The 52-year-old, who divides her time between Paris and the U.K., still remembers when the city’s 9th Arrondissement, where she and her husband bought their 1,885-square-foot duplex in 2017, was a place to have fun rather than put down roots. Now, the 9th is the place to do both.

The 9th, a largely 19th-century district, is Paris at its most urban. But what it lacks in parks and other green spaces, it makes up with nightlife and a bustling street life. Among Paris’s gentrifying districts, which have been transformed since 2000 from near-slums to the brink of luxury, the 9th has emerged as the clear winner. According to Le Breton, average 2023 home prices here were $1,062 a square foot, while its nearest competitors for the cool crown, the 10th and the 11th, have yet to break $1,011 a square foot.

A co-principal in the Bobo Design Studio, Hamon—whose gut renovation includes a dramatic skylight, a home cinema and air conditioning—still seems surprised at how far her arrondissement has come. “The 9th used to be well known for all the theatres, nightclubs and strip clubs,” she says. “But it was never a place where you wanted to live—now it’s the place to be.”

With their youngest child about to go to college, she and her husband, 52-year-old entrepreneur Guillaume Clignet, decided to list their Paris home for $3.45 million and live in London full-time. Propriétés Parisiennes/Sotheby’s is handling the listing, which has just gone into contract after about six months on the market.

The 9th’s music venues were a draw for 44-year-old American musician and piano dealer, Ronen Segev, who divides his time between Miami and a 1,725-square-foot, two-bedroom in the lower reaches of the arrondissement. Aided by Paris Property Group, Segev purchased the apartment at auction during the pandemic, sight unseen, for $1.69 million. He spent $270,000 on a renovation, knocking down a wall to make a larger salon suitable for home concerts.

During the Olympics, Segev is renting out the space for about $22,850 a week to attendees of the Games. Otherwise, he prefers longer-term sublets to visiting musicians for $32,700 a month.

Most Exclusive Address: Avenue Junot

Hidden in the hilly expanses of the 18th Arrondissement lies a legendary street that, for those in the know, is the city’s most exclusive address. Avenue Junot, a bucolic tree-lined lane, is a fairy-tale version of the city, separate from the gritty bustle that surrounds it.

Homes here rarely come up for sale, and, when they do, they tend to be off-market, or sold before they can be listed. Martine Kuperfis—whose Paris-based Junot Group real-estate company is named for the street—says the most expensive units here are penthouses with views over the whole of the city.

In 2021, her agency sold a 3,230-square-foot triplex apartment, with a 1,400-square-foot terrace, for $8.5 million. At about $2,630 a square foot, that is three times the current average price in the whole of the 18th.

Among its current Junot listings is a 1930s 1,220-square-foot townhouse on the avenue’s cobblestone extension, with an asking price of $2.8 million.