The Sustainable Water Platform (PAS) questioned on Thursday the feasibility of building a desalination plant in the Algarve, planned within the framework of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), after learning that the funds available for the project are insufficient.
Describing as significant the admission by officials that there is a “lack of funds to finance the construction of the Algarve seawater desalination plant”, the PAS considered “it evident that the plan cannot be implemented because it is no longer viable.”
Based on this consideration, PAS justified, are the statements made by the president of the Intermunicipal Community of the Algarve (AMAL), António Miguel Pina, acknowledging that “the process of the future desalination plant ‘is not adequate for the total cost that was proposed for tender’”, information that, according to the platform, was “later confirmed by the Minister of the Environment”, Maria da Graça Carvalho.
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PAS quotes statements from António Miguel Pina in which the president of AMAL admits that, “from the moment the infrastructure is designed until the launch of the competition, there is a “an increase of almost 50% in costs”which makes the approximately 50 million euros of financing guaranteed through the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) insufficient.
If this increase of around 50 million euros is reflected in the bill to consumers, There will be “a brutal increase in the price of water payments”He also cited PAS, considering that, with the position expressed, “it seemed that the entities had finally reached the logical conclusion that this investment is not appropriate” due to the “high” cost-benefit.
“In this situation in particular, we can see the complete lack of logic in the management of public money. Any business plan requires an economic feasibility study. If the plan was approved assuming a certain cost and now the cost has doubled, it is clear that the plan cannot be implemented, because it is no longer viable,” he argued.
The PAS also criticized the “lack of logic” in António Miguel Pina’s position on the easing of restrictions on consumption that had been applied and was reviewed by the current Government, while affirming that this measure is “balanced” and that The region needs a desalination plant to deal with the drought affecting the Algarve.
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“After all, do we need water or not? Or do we just need it to justify the construction of the desalination plant?” the platform asked, stressing that “AMAL cannot have double standards for the same problem.”
Although the creation of new sources of water storage, such as a desalination plant, the capture of water from the Guadiana River in Pomarão or the construction of new dams, may seem to be “the perfect solution to the problem of drought and water scarcity”, these solutions imply an “increase in consumption” and “greater damage to ecosystems, which depend on the availability of fresh water”, he said.
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“Spain has the largest storage in dams per capita of Europe, transfers between several river basins and 765 desalination plants in operation, but it faces water shortage problems much more serious than Portugal,” he exemplified, congratulating himself on having allocated 6.6 million euros of the PRR to reduce losses in the urban sector.
“Reducing losses in distribution networks in the urban and agricultural sectors, along with the reuse of wastewater, are some of the other paths that the PAS has defended, from the beginning, as a solution to the problem, without creating new social, economic and environmental problems,” he said.
Source: Observadora
