SPAIN: Provinces, Environmentalists Fight Over Diversion of Rivers

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Sep 3 2004 (IPS) - While in other parts of the world, like the Middle East, the struggle over water sources fuels armed conflicts, a political war is being waged in Spain over the same question.

Environmentalists are demanding that construction of 32 dams be brought to a halt, while local authorities bicker over the diversion of water from rivers, and Spain’s socialist government responds to some demands and turns a deaf ear on others.

A few days after taking office in April, the government of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero called off a project that had already begun to be implemented: the diversion of water from the Ebro River, which runs through the "autonomous communities" (provinces) of Aragón and Catalonia, to the provinces of Valencia and Murcia.

The provinces are all located in the eastern part of the country.

In this case, the government responded to the demands of farmers in the Ebro River delta and the governments of Aragón and Catalonia, both of which are governed by Zapatero’s socialist party (PSOE).

The previous government, of the centre-right José María Aznar, had given the green light to reroute part of the river’s flow as far as 1,000 km to the south in order to bring water to Valencia and Murcia, two of the 17 autonomous communities into which Spain is divided, which are governed by Aznar’s fellow Popular Party (PP) members.

On the other hand, the Zapatero administration has failed to respond to calls from environmentalists, farmers and local authorities in municipalities along the Tajo River, which emerges in the central province of Guadalajara and flows westward to run into the Atlantic Ocean in Lisbon, Portugal.

They want the current rerouting of part of the river’s flow to Murcia, a region located 300 km to the south, on the Mediterranean Sea, to be brought to a halt or reduced.

Javier del Río Romero, a psychologist and schoolteacher who was elected mayo r of the town of Pareja as the PP candidate, told IPS that the diversion of river water "should be completely brought to a halt."

Pareja is one of the 23 villages and towns around the Entrepeñas Reservoir.

Del Río Romero, who is also one of the heads of the Association of Riverside Municipalities of the Entrepeñas and Buendía Reservoirs (both of which store water from the Tajo River), pointed out that homes in and around many of the villages and towns in the area suffer water shortages.

Moreover, those households, whether in rural or urban areas, are not allowed to use water from the public company to irrigate their gardens or crops.

"And in our land, through which the river flows, we just watch it run by, towards other areas, while we lack irrigation infrastructure," which every government has pledged to install since the two reservoirs were built in the 1960s, said del Río Romero.

The Entrepeñas and Buendía reservoirs hold a total of 2,472 cubic hectometres of water.

The municipalities represented by the Association are demanding that at least 40 percent of the water in the reservoirs be reserved for local use.

"It is inconceivable that four decades after the Entrepeñas Reservoir was built, and infrastructure to provide us with water was first promised, water continues to be rerouted to Murcia for a wide variety of uses, while we have to bring in water-trucks to supply many of our villages and towns," said del Río Romero.

In response to the observation that in Murcia, water from the Tajo River is not only used for irrigation of crops, but also to keep golf courses green, for example, the mayor said "one thing is sports, but those courses are used to sustain major real estate interests, while the diversion of water has a very negative effect on our economies."

When the proportion of water rerouted outside of the region was increased in 1999, the water level in the Entrepeñas Reservoir dropped, and the bank of the reservoir receded, to three km from Pareja.

A new artificial lake is now being built near the town, to be fed by two streams, which will no longer flow into the Entrepeñas Reservoir.

"Pareja Lake will give us a boost in terms of economic and social development, in agriculture, sports and tourism," said del Río Romero.

"We hope (Environment Minister Cristina Narbona) will explain to us why she cancelled the diversion of water from the Ebro River but has not done so in the case of the Tajo," he added.

Meanwhile, Ecologists in Action (EEA), an umbrella group of hundreds of local non-governmental organisations, is demanding that Narbona call off plans to build 32 of the 82 new dams projected under the National Hydrologic Plan, some of which are already under construction.

More than 1,200 dams have been built in Spain in the past 100 years, which Santiago Martín Barajas, an EEA expert on water, described as "the most irreversible environmental aggression that has taken place in our country."

Spain is fourth in the world in terms of the number of large dams. No river in this country of 40 million people runs freely from beginning to end.

"Underneath the reservoirs are more than 500 villages whose inhabitants had to abandon their homes and their roots," said Martín Barajas.

During the months of drought and heavy diversion of water, the water level in the Entrepeñas Reservoir drops, and the ruins of houses that were buried when the area was flooded by the dam built 40 years ago can be seen, he pointed out.

The 32 dams opposed by the EEA "are more damaging than the one that was to be built on the Ebro," said the environmentalist, "because they would involve the flooding and death of 32 villages."

The Environment Ministry says all of the complaints and demands are being studied, and that the appropriate measures will be adopted after the ministry has heard from all of the concerned parties.

Martín Barajas admitted that under the new government, all of the questions are once again being analysed by the "hydrographic confederations", comprise d of representatives of the local, regional and national governments.

The governments and agriculture and tourism associations in the provinces of Valencia and Murcia, in the meantime, want the water from the Tajo River to continue to be diverted, and are calling for a renewal of the works in the Ebro River basin.

The alternative that Narbona opted for, in the case of the Ebro, is to build desalinisation plants to purify water from the Mediterranean to provide just over one billion cubic metres of potable water to Valencia, Murcia, Catalonia and Andalusia, with an outlay of more than 3.0 billion euros (3.7 billion dollars).

But critics of the measure, especially the provincial government of Valencia, say the salt removed from the seawater would be dumped back into the Mediterranean, creating highly toxic deposits.

The minister rejected that argument, saying the problem is being taken into account in the desalinisation plans.

The governor of Murcia, Ramón Luis Valcárcel, considers the construction of desalinisation plants a positive thing, but only as a complement to diverting the Ebro, a plan he continues to pursue.

The Zapatero government’s reversal of the previous administration’s decision to divert the course of the Ebro River is one of the most controversial steps it has taken regarding the question of water supplies.

The Ebro, the country’s second biggest river, begins in the Cantabria mountains, along Spain’s northern coast, and runs 928 km before flowing into the Mediterranean in Catalonia, on the northeastern coast.

Narbona argues that it would be "absurd" to reroute the river to that extent, especially since the water would have to be pumped to an altitude of 1,000 metres to climb mountains lying along the proposed route.

In addition to hurting the Ebro delta and the areas that currently depend on water from the river, and the cost of 900 km of canals and pipeline, "it poses a threat to Spain’s environmental health," she said.