The Tagus-Segura transfer celebrates its 44th anniversary at the most critical moment in its history due to the Tagus Plan, which will cause “an unfortunate string of consequences derived from cutting off the possibility of transferring in the coming years of the order of 40%,” he said. yesterday the president of the Union of Irrigators, Lucas Jiménez, who considers that they are treated by the national government “like black sheep.”
“These are hard years that await the agricultural sector with the ideological winds that are blowing,” he stressed in an act at the regional government headquarters, with the absence of opposition political representatives. Members of the Valencian Council and the Hydrographic Confederation did not attend either.
The regional Executive and the PP staged this commemoration of the arrival of the first waters of the Tagus in 1979. Although it is not a round date, the context is marked by the crossroads at which the Transfer is located and the proximity of the elections. Representatives of the irrigation communities of the Transfer and traditional irrigation companies were invited, as well as leaders of agricultural unions, cooperatives, the Croem employers’ association, the Chamber of Commerce and the UMU, among others.
The act was different from the one organized by Scrats in March 2019 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Transfer, at the Romea Theater in Murcia. Then the presidents of Murcia and the Valencian Community attended, who were distinguished for their defense of the aqueduct. The act put an end to Ximo Puig’s discomfort over López Miras’s criticism of the water policy of Pedro Sánchez’s Executive and Minister Teresa Ribera.
“A Deathblow”
On this occasion, and as host, the president of the Community Fernando López Miras, accompanied by members of his cabinet, had the president of the Assembly, Alberto Castillo, the Andalusian Minister of Agriculture, Carmen Crespo, and the vice president of the Provincial Council of Alicante. As a climax to the act, they stamped their hands with blue paint on a mural.
López Miras highlighted “the spirit and strength of staying united in the defense and claim” of the aqueduct. “We are invincible if we go hand in hand,” he stressed. He congratulated all the sectors that directly and indirectly depend on this resource and that contribute to making the Region of Murcia a world reference in food production.
Likewise, he recalled the measures carried out by his Government, such as the upcoming filing of an appeal before the Supreme Court; as well as the initiative of legislative impulse approved in the Regional Assembly to later elevate it to the Congress of Deputies, in order to shield this infrastructure. López Miras specified that the appeal before the Supreme Court of the Murcian Government goes “in a different line” from that of the Consell, considering that “it accepts the cuts as good.” “The Transfer is not touched, neither much nor little,” he stressed.
He assured that the central government “has dealt a mortal blow to the largest hydraulic infrastructure” in Spain, “due to sectarianism and political opportunism.” He added that, of all the transfers that work in the country, only the Tagus-Segura has been cut.
The Minister of Agriculture of Andalusia, Carmen Crespo, recalled the importance of the Transfer for Almería, on which 3,500 jobs and 24,000 hectares of crops depend. She added that the Levante “is very fond of the Tagus and that it is in good condition”, although she considered that the ecological flows “must be fair and necessary; not politicians.”
In his speech, Lucas Jiménez pointed out that the irrigators of the Transfer “have once again been ignored, relegated, treated like a group of black sheep. We are the only irrigating users that the State has not seen fit to consult about ecological flows, because, as members of the Ministry itself affirmed, the Alto Tajo decision did not respond to technical needs. He escaped the impartial scope of the technique to submerge himself in the turbid and convulsive waters of the arcane and outdated ideology that the Ministry imposes in matters of hydrology».
He warned that “in the coming years we will see significant cuts in conventional water supplies for the sector. Not only the Transfer, we will also closely follow the drama of the underground resources ». He warned that, “in the coming years and after this monumental nonsense by the Government of the Nation, we will witness an unfortunate string of consequences derived from curtailing the possibility of transferring over the next few years of the order of 40% of the waters that, on average, , we received for irrigation and supply in these regions. We already know that thousands of hectares of irrigated land or, what is the same, thousands of hectares of CO2 sinks will disappear. In addition to the economic effects that it will have for our business fabric.
He has referred to a “painful fact with a social drama coupled”, based “on a cold and disturbing figure provided by Professor Joaquín Melgarejo: more than 15,000 people will join the fearsome list of unemployment in Alicante, Almería and Murcia for mor of this personal decision of the minister Teresa Ribera, endorsed by the president of the Spanish executive».
“They act like clowns”
Lucas Jiménez accused the Manchego president, Emiliano García-Page, and the Government delegate in that community, Francisco Tierraseca, of “acting like clowns” at the inauguration in Saelices (Cuenca) of the ‘Manchega Pipeline’, which will supply water from the Tajo to 15 municipalities of Cuenca, Ciudad Real and Albacete.
He regretted that these leaders “were glad that the connection would reduce the transfer of water to the Segura.”
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