Benidorm awards the technical assistance contract for the Comprehensive Water Footprint Management Plan

The Local Government Board of Benidorm City Council has awarded Hidraqua the contract for external technical assistance services for Benidorm Integrated Water Footprint Management Plan. This project falls under Action 2 of the 2022 Sustainable Tourism Destination Plan, "Benidorm Visión 360," which is included in the Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan financed with European Union funds—Next Generation EU. The contract budget is €65,000.

The study aims to "understand the water demands of the different local economic sectors to make decisions that improve management effectiveness and efficiency," stated Mayor Toni Pérez, who specified that the budget for the Integrated Water Footprint Management Plan and all associated actions amounts to €465,000.

Hidraqua's proposal received the highest score of all those submitted to the tender, so the Contracting Committee ultimately recommended its award to the Governing Board. Thus, the current concessionaire of the Water Cycle in Benidorm obtained the maximum score in the criteria for service provision, indicators, implementation plan, and proposed measures to reduce the water footprint, with a total of 45 points.

Regarding the financial offer, Hidraqua's was €65,000 (VAT included) with a six-month deadline. Together with the other criteria of the mathematical offer, this obtained a score of 24.5 points. The sum of the technical and financial criteria was 69.5 points, making it the best proposal.

The line of action seeks to develop a web platform for calculating the municipality's territorial water footprint, following the principles, requirements, and guidelines of the ISO 14046 standard for water footprint assessment. This study, Toni Pérez explained, "aims to calculate the water demands of the different sectors within the municipal territory and will include an individual analysis of municipal water use, water use in agriculture and municipal irrigation, the industrial sector, and also the impact of tourism on water management."

The water footprint calculation will also provide insight into the total amount of freshwater used to produce goods and services in Benidorm, including water directly consumed by the population, as well as water used in the production of food, industrial products, and other services such as tourism. "This will allow us to propose measures for sustainable management of the resource and establish strategies to improve the efficiency of water use," Pérez added.

The successful bidder must develop a web platform for managing Benidorm's territorial water footprint, which means it must perform and audit its calculation, taking into account all its activities related to the entire water cycle.

The calculation, as stated, will be carried out using the guidelines established in the ISO 14046 standard, obtaining the blue, green, and grey water footprints. The blue water footprint refers to the consumption of surface and groundwater resources throughout a product's supply chain. The green water footprint refers to the consumption of rainwater resources, to the extent that it does not become runoff and is incorporated into crops or other green areas, returning to the atmosphere through plant evapotranspiration. The grey footprint is defined as the volume of freshwater required to assimilate the pollutant load, given natural background concentrations and environmental quality standards. It refers to water that becomes contaminated as a result of production processes.

With the results in hand, Hidraqua will conduct an awareness campaign in which the results of the water footprint for the first year will be presented, and an explanatory presentation will be made on the measures to reduce the territorial water footprint.