From “Build me Porra” to the fifth filling. The Alqueva Dam could hardly have a better gift.
Nineteen years after closing the filling gates, 8 February 2002, the Alqueva dam is close to reaching the fifth full filling of its history, reaching storage of 4.150 cubic hectometres of water, the quota 152 meters.
yesterday at 09,00 hours, and according to information from the Alqueva Development and Infrastructure Company (EDIA) the Lidador News (LN), the largest artificial lake in Europe, with an area of 250 kilometers and about 1.160 kilometers margins, stored 3.309,20 hm3 and was at quota 148,17 meters and 79,73% of its maximum capacity.
Alqueva first filled in 12 January 2010, situation that was repeated in March of that same year, water was released into the Guadiana riverbed by secondary floodgates. Early 2013 the dam filled for the third time and this time the surface gates were opened and the largest water discharges ever made, that raised the limits of the Guadiana and many people lost their animals, that had illegally on the riverbed.
The last time it filled up was at the beginning of 2014, but at the time EDIA did not download to “Grande Rio do Sul”, doing the control through the hydroelectric plant, producing energy.
Despite the heavy rain that has been falling in recent days in the Alentejo region, is from Spain, region where it has been raining a lot, it is through the Badajoz reservoir that the largest amount of water has entered, which has led to the increase in Alqueva levels. In Portugal the water entering the Monte a Vinha reservoir, located at 2 kilometers south of the city, between days 7 and 8 February the flow reached the 675 cubic meters per second.
Carlos Silva, responsible for Public Relations at EDIA, He justified the LN, that “the Badajoz reservoir is the most important for filling Alqueva”, adding that south of Elvas “there are several tributaries of the Guadiana, but that do not discharge such important amounts of water ”, concluded.
Faced with a possible new filling of the dam, Carlos Silva does not feed forecasts: “It's hard to say it fills in 2 or 3 three days, everything depends on what keeps raining ”, leaving the guarantee that “it is not linear that if this happens there may be discharges to the Guadiana, can be used to produce electricity through the hydroelectric power station "concluded.
After 2.400 million euro investment, 21 years of work and 19 to fill, beyond energy production, Alqueva strengthens two important guarantees: strengthening the public supply of 13 Alentejo municipalities with over 200.000 population, including Beja and Évora and the irrigation capacity of 120.000 hectares of diverse cultures.
Gone are the days when someone wrote on the walls of the Guadiana river bridge, when the crowning of the dam was a chimera: “Build me, Fuck me”.
Teixeira Correia
(journalist)
