The Drought Commission will meet next week.
The rehabilitation of boreholes and the use of “small mobile desalination plants” could be measures to be adopted in agricultural terms in the Algarve to minimize the drought situation, the Minister of Agriculture, Maria do Céu Antunes, admitted today.
On the sidelines of a ceremony at the Alqueva dam in the Alentejo, the minister was asked by journalists about the critical situation in the Algarve with regard to the lack of water, and revealed that the Drought Commission will meet next week, without, however, indicating the day.
A source from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food later told Lusa that the meeting will take place on the 17th at 14:30.
“That’s when we’ll be able to look at everything that’s being designed and thought about, which can and will go through restriction, as we’ve already had for two years, for example at the Bravura dam (Lagos), where the water is so little that it’s not even good for human supply,” said Maria do Céu Antunes.
According to the minister, who recalled that in this area it was necessary to “rehabilitate some boreholes that had been deactivated” in order to “maintain permanent crops, namely orange groves”, the contingency plans for the various agricultural uses in the Algarve “will have to be adjusted according to this new reality”.
“And measures are being designed that could include, for example, small mobile desalination plants that could help [and] the rehabilitation of boreholes where the aquifers allow us to do so” or even “financial compensation”, she admitted.
But, according to the Minister of Agriculture, “only” after the meeting of the Interministerial Drought Commission will the ministry be able to “say what will be on the table for agriculture in the Algarve”.
The Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) hopes to present a contingency plan later this month with new rules for water consumption in the Algarve, which is going through the longest drought on record.
The vice-president of the APA, José Pimenta Machado, admitted to Lusa on Monday that the contingency plan would penalize agriculture more, but said that the quotas had not yet been defined and would be worked out with local actors.
The president of the Algarve Intermunicipal Community, António Miguel Pina, revealed to Lusa, also on Monday, that the APA should propose rules to reduce water consumption in the Algarve by 70% for the agricultural sector and 15% for urban consumers.
Asked by Lusa today about this 70% reduction in water consumption in the agricultural sector, the minister declined to discuss the matter before the meeting of the Drought Commission.
“Anything I say could be extemporaneous and doesn’t make sense without first convening the inter-ministerial drought committee. A lot of work is being done, technical meetings are taking place today to find solutions to minimize the impact that all this will have on the lives of citizens, whether for human consumption or for other purposes, such as industry, tourism and even agriculture,” she said.
According to the minister, the measures that will be decided and adopted in terms of agriculture will be worked on “so that they can be implemented at the start of the next irrigation campaign”.
Maria do Céu Antunes also said that in the field of agriculture, the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) has “17 million euros of work underway to create greater resilience” in the Algarve to climate change and drought.