the guard house will stop irrigating an area of 33% of the city’s gardens and substitute water from decorative fountains and reduce consumption in sports spaces to save water due to drought.
“Immediately we are reduced by 1/3 of the irrigation area in city gardens and we will permanently follow the need to increase this reduction to the limit of 100%. Immediately, 33%, [ou seja] 1/3 [da área] The city’s gardens will no longer be watered,” said Mayor Sérgio Costa (Guarda Movement).
The President of the Municipality of Guarda intervened in the presentation of the “fundamental containment measures for the moderation of water consumption in the municipality of Guarda”, held in the auditorium of the Environment Division building.
“If we want water to drink, which goes through the tap, we can’t continually waste it in the gardens,” he said.
Sérgio Costa said that due to the lack of water, the towns of Ambom, Rocamondo and Traginha be supplied daily by tanker trucksbecause local fundraising dried up.
He said that the company Águas do Vale do Tejo has already been asked to adapt two wastewater treatment stations to supply treated wastewater for irrigation.
At the level of the livestock sector, old captures were reactivated in three parishes (Pousade and São Miguel and São Pedro do Jarmelo) for the aberration of the animal.
Regarding the municipal swimming pools, he said that “the order has already been given to reduce the renewal or replacement of their waters, to the limit of maintaining the legal parameters, with the eventual need for their closure.”
As for the city’s decorative fountains, “although it is operating in a closed circuit, no replacement of water by evaporation will be carried out and it may lead to dismissal.”
The municipality will also gradually reduce consumption in sports spaces”,either by irrigation, or by the use of spas“.
Regarding the Government’s recommendation to increase the rates with respect to large domestic consumers, given “the bad impact on the region”, the Mayor of Guarda said that the municipality “will carry out the appropriate technical analyzes to analyze other possible alternatives for saving water ”.
Sérgio Costa recalled that public uses of water in public tanks and fountains are prohibited and appealed to citizens “for the conscious and balanced use of water.”
Rui Melo, from the Environment Division, has advanced with other measures that are being compared, such as remote management of the irrigation network and the application of an intelligent irrigation management system.
Tree planting and the use of telemetry and telegemination to reduce public water losses are other initiatives to consider.
The vice president of the Portuguese Environment Agency, Pimenta Machado, also present at the session, highlighted the drought at the national level and said that the Caldeirão dam, which supplies the city and the municipality of Guardia, is “in critical and vigilance“By presenting a volume of stored water of 53%.
The prolonged drought on the continent is affecting crops, causing cuts in the use of water and forcing villages to feed themselves with tank trucks.
From October 2021 to August it has rained practically half as much as normal, according to the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and the Atmosphere (IPMA).
Source: Observadora
