Water war intensifies

AGRICULTURAL growers who need the Tajo-Segura pipeline’s water for irrigation are bitterly opposed to the central government’s intention of reducing supplies.

This will affect agriculture in Alicante, Murcia and Almeria and all concerned announced that they would take to the streets in a bid to reverse the Environment Ministry’s decision.

Members of Almeria’s Mesa del Agua (Water Committee) and the Federation of Irrigators (FERAL) joined the first protest in Murcia last weekend.  So, too, did Aranzazu Martin Moya, the Junta’s delegate to Almeria for Agriculture.

FERAL’s president Jose Antonio Fernandez Maldonado lamented the central government’s decision to “unilaterally” change the Tajo-Segura pipeline regulations.

“This will cause serious harm to irrigators in the Almanzora area,” he predicted.

Increasing the Tajo’s environmental flow – needed to maintain the  freshwater ecosystem – in Aranjuez (Madrid) was “unjustified” and would require releasing more water from the Buendia and Entrepeñas reservoirs that feed the Tajo-Segura pipeline, Fernandez said.

Reducing the amount of water transferred to Almeria and south-east in general would also increase evaporation in the reservoirs and benefit nobody, he added.

Ultimately this would result in a “a desert and unemployment,” he warned.