With a new Government in Portugal, Spain insists on demanding access to water from Alqueva | Water

Although government interlocutors have changed, “there seem to be conditions” to negotiate access for Huelva farmers to water stored in Alqueva, admitted María José Rico, Government sub-delegate in the Spanish region, in an interview with the daily Long live Huelva, on April 28th.

Rico assured the onubense media outlet that the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge (Miteco) sent a letter 15 days ago to the newly formed Portuguese Government proposing a meeting to reach an agreement that would make it possible to capture water in Pomarão, more precisely at the confluence of Uncle Chança with the Guadiana river and next to the border line between the Iberian countries.

During the opening ceremony of the 40th Feira do Alentejo – Ovibeja, PÚBLICO asked Maria da Graça Carvalho, the current Minister of Environment and Energy, who accompanied Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, if she confirmed the request that had been formulated by Miteco. The government official assured that she had not received the letter referred to by María José Rico, adding that the two Environment Ministries will meet soon “to discuss other issues”, without specifying which ones.

This is not the first time that Andalusian authorities have claimed access to water from the Alqueva dam. The former Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and Environment, Isabel García Tejerina, had also refused in 2016 to propose to Portugal the possibility of water from Alqueva being sent to the province of Huelva, claiming that this solution was not included in the Plan Hydrology of the Tinto-Odiel and Piedras Basin.

In October 2023, the Andalusian parliament repeated the same request, approving with one hundred votes in favor, five abstentions and two against, an indication to the central government to request Portugal to temporarily transfer water rights to the Tinto hydrographic network -Odiel-Piedras-Chança. The province of Huelva was struggling with an extreme drought.

As this was a request to another State, the Andalusian Government urged the central executive to do so. The Minister of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera reacted in November 2023 to the request, considering the transfer of water from Alqueva “almost impossible” with a strong argument: this type of claims are not covered by the Albufeira Agreement, signed in 1998, and which stipulates the management of border rivers between both countries.

The controversial water intake from Boca-Chança

Water collection at the point identified by the Spanish, Boca-Chança, has remained ambiguous since the beginning of the century. By claiming water from Alqueva, the Spanish authorities (Guadiana Hydrographic Confederation and Junta de Andalucía) only intend to formalize the use of the water that they have withdrawn over the last two decades, in a systematic and constant way, in other words: the Spanish authorities capture water in two points of the Chança reservoir and the bed of this river, from Boca-Chança.

In 2023, the Junta de Andalucía approved an investment of 2.8 million euros to increase the pumping capacity of that collection system installed in the early 1990s.

The system remains in operation uninterruptedly when the tide is low. When high tides occur, salt water rises up the Guadiana River to Mértola, making it impossible to catch it in Huelva.

This hydraulic infrastructure currently has the capacity to pump 63 cubic hectometers (hm3) of water, “a volume considered insufficient to mitigate the drought” that the Huelva region is facing. The solution adopted is to add 12 hm³ per year until reaching the 75 hm³ established in the basin’s emergency plan”, highlights the information from the Junta de Andalucía.

In turn, the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) confirmed to PÚBLICO, in the summer of 2023, that the Portuguese Government does not approve water abstractions from the Spanish pumping station of Boca-Chança, on the Guadiana river, claiming that the system “It should have stopped working in 2003, after the inauguration of the Andévalo dam”.

The collection installed by the Spanish authorities “is still on a provisional basis and its definitive operation has not been authorized by the Portuguese State”, APA confirmed to PÚBLICO.

Other water requests

Further north in the Extremadura region, the Alqueva dam has already irrigated 500 hectares in the municipality of Villanueva del Fresno (province of Badajoz) since January 2023, following a prior agreement adopted within the scope of the Commission for the Application and Development of the Albufeira Convention (CADCA ).

The municipality of Olivença, also located in the province of Badajoz, has already submitted a request to the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, just over five years ago, to capture almost 12 hm3 of water annually and directly from the Alqueva reservoir to irrigate 1712 hectares planted with trees of fruit and super-intensive olive groves. The request awaits the approval of CADCA.

This implies, in turn, that the transfer required by the Andalusian authorities could be challenged by the autonomous communities of Castile-La Mancha and Extremadura, which suffer from restrictions on the Spanish section of the Guadiana to guarantee Portugal the volumes agreed under the Albufeira Agreement.

The volume of water transferred to Portugal is determined by the water accumulated in the designated reference reservoirs in the province of Badajoz, such as the Cijara, García Sola, Orellana, La Serena, Zújar and Alange dams. And it is the calculation of the water stored in these reservoirs that establishes the flow to be transferred to Portugal in the following hydrological year.

If the water request requested by Andalusia were supported, irrigated farmers in Castilian and Extremadura would find themselves in a paradox: the water they save would end up being used in agriculture, tourism and mining activities in the province of Huelva.