The internal report of the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Transition on the Tajo-Segura transfer prepared for the distribution of desalinated water from Torrevieja among irrigators reveals the deprivation of flow rates who have been suffering for a long time in the countryside of Alicante, Murcia and Almeria decades.
In addition to recognizing that in the future there will not be enough transfers for the sector, as published ABCThis document from the Hydrographic Confederation of Segura (CHS) includes references to the past of the aqueduct, in which it confirms what farmers have been denouncing for so long: that Never Ha arrived he promised water.
The current reality, which justifies the allocation of desalination flows, whose expansion is planned in the Torrevieja plant – the largest in Europe – up to 120 cubic hectometres per year, is summed up in this sentence: “The improvement of the underfunding situation and lack of guarantee of the irrigation of the Tajo-Segura transfer.
This tag is included in the file of each of the 46 irrigation communities evaluated to receive this future volume of water, not yet generated, with only one excluded due to “incompatibility», precisely that of San Miguel de Salinas, where a solar macroplant to supply the production of desalinated water in Torrevieja.
In the description of how this situation of resource deficit was reached, there is this figure of reduction, year after year, of the volume initially planned for the transfer from the Tagus to the Segura: 421 hm3.
In practice, the average has remained halved, at 224 hectometres on average, sometimes due to drought and the lack of reserves in the reservoirs of the head of the Tagus -Entrepeñas and Buendía-, but other times it has been due to cuts discretionary decisions taken by the Ministry, which exercises this power over certain intermediate water levels in the above-mentioned marshes. In this “internal note”, these reasons are not mentioned, there is no analysis.
In addition to these two main factors, if we put into perspective the evolution of the operating standards of the aqueduct, there was another condition just ten years ago, such as the rise in the water level minimum threshold to close the transfer valve, from 240 to 400 hm3. Because that was not enough to achieve it.
Currently, with the current regulations, the Ministry can adopt emergency measures, such as this dispatch of desalination resources, generally for the entire Segura field, and not only for those that depend on the transfer. “In addition, it is possible to allocate these waters to eliminate situations of current unsustainability due to the existing overexploitation of aquifers, and restore the balance of the environment, trying, as far as possible, to ensure the subsistence of uses linked to these aquifers”, indicates this report.
However, it focuses precisely on farmers who use the aqueduct: “In accordance with the conditions of the appeal, this overexploitation “It would be limited to that existing in the irrigable areas of the Tajo-Segura transfer.”
