Dangerous assemblages: Salts, trihalomethanes and endocrine disruptors in the water palimpsest of the Llobregat River, Catalonia

Assembling the water factory: Seawater desalination and the techno-politics of water privatisation in the San Diego–Tijuana metropolitan region

“…Terrestrial water supplies exist in an almost constant state of flux: both physical flux, in that they flow and combine with other material and technical forms, are dependent on unpredictable climate and rainfall patterns, and are challenging to capture, store and transport; and socio-political flux, in that they pass through multiple overlapping and complex forms of ownership and use, and are increasingly contested. Gorostiza and Sauri (2017) mobilise assemblage thinking to interrogate how riparian waters embody historic sociomaterial relations through watershed pollution, with particular political implications. This paper, by contrast, suggests that the desalination assemblage functions to remove water supply from these complex histories.…”

Naturalizing pollution: a critical social science view on the link between potash mining and salinization in the Llobregat river basin, northeast Spain

“…In this sense, history and especially environmental history—usually defined as ‘the history of the mutual relations between humankind and the rest of nature’ [36, p. 6]—can shield from the perils of naturalization by critically examining how the process of naturalizing pollution has unfolded through time. In the case of salinization processes, the analysis of assemblages of agents and of their historical changes may reveal hidden relations pointing towards human responsibilities and may be also of interest when approaching the subjects of causation and uncertainty, both key factors in naturalizing pollution [37].…”

“…Moreover, the Barcelona water company was accused of extracting too much water from the aquifers near the sea, causing saline intrusion [26]. Despite the mobilization of a growing social movement denouncing river salinization, conversations about the funding necessary to build a brine sewer and other measures to control the problem stalled [37].…”

“…Unsurprisingly, once mining activities resumed under the Francoist dictatorship, river salinization increased again, Republican legislation was cancelled and brine sewer projects shelved [26]. The construction of the first reservoirs in the basin contributed to a better regulation of the river flow and thus to an enhanced control of dilution [37]. Salinization continued growing unabated, but particularly in the 1960s, industrial activity in the Llobregat basin compromised river quality in more aggressive ways [37,58].…”

“…The construction of the first reservoirs in the basin contributed to a better regulation of the river flow and thus to an enhanced control of dilution [37]. Salinization continued growing unabated, but particularly in the 1960s, industrial activity in the Llobregat basin compromised river quality in more aggressive ways [37,58]. By the 1970s, five decades of potash mining in the region had brought salinization to a new ‘normal’, naturalizing the high salinity of the river waters.…”