A researcher from the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Duero stated this Thursday that water transfers between basins create important social conflicts and deficit problems in the places where the resource is extracted.
Rui Cortés was speaking with the Lusa agency about the regional meetings of the ‘Água que Une’ working group, created by the Government in July to develop a new national strategy for water management.
The water resources specialist regretted that the meeting agenda included as a possibility to study, although as a last resort, the interconnection between river basins, particularly from north to south, and intensive and super-intensive agriculture and a large consumer of water.
“Water needs are obviously more pressing in the south of the country, where it rains less, but it is precisely where the areas of very demanding crops have increased,” pointed out the researcher from the Center for Agro-Environmental and Biological Research. Technologies (CITAB), from the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Duero (UTAD).
In his opinion, it is essential to consider the agricultural issue as an essential aspect and not move, as seems to be happening, towards greater artificialization of water courses, the use of groundwater (through drilling) or an increase in the number of dams. (regularization).
“We are going towards a situation that is very dangerous, which is the fact that The management of water resources must be carried out by hydrographic basins and, by proposing the transfers, what is recommended in the Water Framework Directive is completely violated,” he also highlighted, recalling that two months ago a European biodiversity strategy was approved that precisely foresees the reduction of barriers and the increase of free rivers.
And, he stated, Portugal is “thinking about moving towards a situation of creating more reservoirs and transfers, which does not respond to what this European strategy proposes.”
Regarding transfers, Rui Cortés considered that it is a measure that, if implemented, will have a “negative repercussions from the point of view of biodiversity and the ecological quality of watercourses“.
“Transferring water from one basin to another is create deficit problems in the basins from which water is extracted”, he stated, also considering that “transfers generate important conflicts at a social level.”
He gave an example with the case of Spain, specifically with the transfer of water from the Alto Tajo to Andalusia, pointing out that farmers in the Spanish Tajo area have protested strongly and that the Spanish Government has already decided to reduce transfers by 40%.
In the order published in the Diário da República in July, it is stated that the plans must take into account, “ultimately, the transfer of water between river basins”, in addition to “new sources of water, in particular reuse, desalination of sea and brackish water, optimization of the exploitation of existing reservoirs and aquifers, construction of new storage infrastructures or alteration of existing ones.”
Rui Cortés, also a member of the National Water Council, regretted that the meetings only began in October, four months after the creation of the working group, whose mission ends on December 21.
“It’s all over the knee and, despite trying to bring together universities, non-governmental organizations and the public sector, I don’t know what can be done in such a short time,” he noted.
He also mentioned that the National Water Council prepared a document approximately a year and a half ago on the strategic measures to be taken in drought situations, whether in the short, medium or long term.
“It is a document that has been created and that answers these questions,” he highlighted.
Source: Observadora
