The future of irrigators of San Miguel de Salinas (Alicante) is even more obscured, if possible, because they can be considered expelled by four different routes. The government will expropriate their to land and -some- their houses to install solar panels with which to produce more desalinated water and cut the flow of the Tajo-Segura transfer. They are now also excluded from the distribution of the volume generated by photovoltaic energy.
This latest decision is a new blow and attracts attention because it is the only irrigating community out of 47 in total that is excluded from the planned distribution of these new water resources.
In what is called “report of water concession compatibility of the expansion of the Torrevieja desalination plant for the Transfer Zone”, of the Hydrographic Confederation of Segura, to which it had access ABCthe allocation provided for all other groups of farmers is argued, while it is considered “incompatible” in the case of Saint Michael of Salinas.
In some cases, maximum volumes of water are stipulated that can be transferred to a specific irrigation community, or the concession is conditioned to other requirements, such as the renunciation of groundwater, for example. On the other hand, those most affected by the installation – in this municipality of Alicante – of the solar macroplant which would make this increased desalination possible, they are denied.
Literally, the aforementioned report states that there will be no flow for them “unless there is a better justification to the contrary” because “it has complementary resources of treated water in a volume greater than the undersupply.”
Asaja: “It’s shameless”
From the association Asaja-Alicanteits president, Jose Vicente Andreudenounced this discrimination: “The irrigation community of San Miguel asked for desalinated water, and it is the only one of all to which water is refused, they are given zero m³.”
After months of protests against the installation of this macro photovoltaic solar power plant, which the neighbors have joined and even with the support of the socialist mayor, Juan de Dios Fresneda, these farmers are also excluded from the only benefit that this infrastructure could bring them, paradoxically.
“This may sound like a joke, but it is not, it is a impudence: they are expropriated 200 hectares “the best lands and then, as payment for the sacrifice, they deny them water,” criticized the president of Asaja-Alicante.
