The Odemira Municipal Assembly repudiated the actions of the Mira Beneficiaries Association (ABM) in the water management of the Santa Clara reservoir and demanded the immediate replacement of the ecological flow of the Mira river.
In a motion sent today to the Lusa agency, approved unanimously last Friday, the municipal assembly also decided to disapprove the cutting of supply to small consumers and the blocking of water by ABM “which does not guarantee the necessary ecological flow in the Mira River”.
The decision is related to “the growing water scarcity in the Santa Clara-a-Velha reservoir” which “led to the cutting of water supply to small consumers who are outside the Mira Irrigation Perimeter [PRM], in Aljezur and Odemira” and because “the ecological flow to the Mira river is not being guaranteed”.
This situation, said the municipal deputies, puts “at risk the biodiversity that depends on that water” and there are “already reports of the appearance of dead fish in dry sections of the river” Mira.
The motion, presented by Left Bloc deputy Pedro Gonçalves, also alluded to the “lack of a Contingency Plan to address water scarcity” in the Santa Clara reservoir, which led the president of the Odemira City Council “to state at the last meeting of the ABM Strategic Council” that “the water available for irrigation purposes is only enough for one year, if it does not rain".
“According to information on the ABM website, the Santa Clara reservoir was 48% of its maximum capacity in 23 June. In other words, had only 234 million cubic meters of water at the beginning of summer. This volume is already below the useful capacity of the reservoir, which is 240,3 million cubic meters, is mentioned in the document.
At the reservoir, “are captured annually 2,5 million cubic meters of water for public supply, which contrasts with those around 33,8 million cubic meters for the irrigation campaign. The volume captured for PRM agricultural holdings is already around 14 times higher than that captured for public supply”, noticed.
Municipal deputies also gave the example of the Parish Council of Santa Clara-a-Velha, who asked ABM for “an estimate of the costs of the water to be made available” for a period of three months, after the “blocking of water discharges into the river”, with the association “mentioning that it provided water in exchange” for a sum exceeding 16 thousand euros.
“The problem here is not the lack of water, but the desire to do business on the part of ABM, with the water that doesn’t belong to you and that belongs to all of us”, criticized.
in motion, it is also argued that the “expansion of intensive agriculture worsens in the PRM, depleting the region's water resources and putting at risk both the access of small consumers and the population in general to water, such as the survival of fauna and flora that depend on the ecological flow released by the Santa Clara reservoir”.
