Recent rains do little to help Spanish water wars

Recent rains do little to help Spanish water wars
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By h.b. - Apr 16, 2008 - 3:35 PM

Archive Photo EFE

Reservior levels have increased by 2.5 percent over the past week in Spain, but are still down 12.5 percent on the year

The rains seen in Spain over the past week or so have resulted in a 2.5% increase in the amount of water stored, but have done nothing to ease the situation in the crisis areas of the country, Barcelona, Murcia and the Levante Coast.
Nationally the reservoirs currently hold 12.1% less water than a year ago.

A new report from the European Union does nothing to calm the dramatic situation, predicting a reduction in rainfall in Spain of between 20% and 40% by the end of the century.
Brussels has said that new ‘more integrated’ water policy is needed in Spain for what is called a more rational use of resources.

According to the Spanish Ministry for the Environment, agriculture takes 60% of water supply, and here a great effort has been made over recent years to modernise the irrigation systems.
The Government has claimed that it is precisely the water now saved in such irrigation which is planned to be captured from the mouth of the Ebro river to be piped to Barcelona. The fact that water for Tarragona has been extracted from the river for some time has given the Government the excuse to call the new 60km pipe which will link Tarragona to Barcelona as a 'new connection', instead of a 'transfer'.

Minister for the Environment, Elena Espinosa, has repeated time and time again the plan is not a transfer. The reason for that is that the regions of both Valencia and Murcia are demanding what they describe as their own water transfers, transfers which the Socialists cancelled in favour of a policy for the construction of more desalination plants.

In Murcia, the President of the regional government, Ramón Luis Valcárcel has spoken of the possibility of uniting with the President of the Valencia region, Francisco Camps to, as he put it, ‘mobilise the society’ of the two regions, and that of Almería to demand the water which ‘belongs to Spain and nobody needs.’

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