The president of the regional government, Fernando López Miras, warned this Wednesday that “if the precautionary suspension of the cutting of the Tajo-Segura Transfer that the Executive has requested, there will be irreparable damage to the entire Region of Murcia, and especially in the planning the sowing and harvesting of the coming months, because farmers cannot risk bearing new and greater losses than those they already suffer. In addition, he stressed that this precautionary measure “is necessary to avoid damage that is difficult to reverse from minute one,” since the cut “condemns us to ruin” and “affects the whole of society, not just agriculture.”
López Miras met at the Palacio de San Esteban with the president of the transfer irrigators, Lucas Jiménez, with the professor of History and Economic Institutions and director of the Water Chair of the University of Alicante and the Alicante Provincial Council, Joaquín Melgarejo , and with the director of the Euro-Mediterranean Water Institute, Paco Cabezas. After that meeting “to advance in the defense of the interests of the Region of Murcia, Alicante, Almería and the entire Spanish Levante”, the head of the regional Executive offered more details about the precautionary request made while the Supreme Court studies the appeal in defense of the Tagus-Segura.
Thus, the president pointed out that the Community has requested the precautionary suspension of the new ecological flow regime “because there is no superior public interest that requires immediate application, but it is more than proven that its application immediately generates serious economic and social damage.” in the Region of Murcia”. In this sense, he recalled that the appeal against the Supreme Court seeks to “correct an opportunistic and sectarian decision that lacks any technical rigor”, and highlighted that “the more the Decree that cuts the transfer is studied, the more it becomes clear to us that behind only There are political reasons.”
To support its request for precautionary measures, the regional government has attached a report with ten annexes that represent the technical work that has been entrusted to different experts in the field.
«I trust that our approaches will be taken into account, which are much more than those of a Government, and which go beyond even those that irrigators rightly defend: they are the arguments of an entire Region that is today attacked from unjustified manner,” said López Miras. In addition, the president promised that “we will continue to act in a coordinated manner, shoulder to shoulder, with a single voice, in defense of the transfer.” The objective is “for Justice to listen to the voice of the people of Murcia”, for which “we will exhaust all avenues”.
Professor Melgarejo stressed in his speech that “the decrease in transferred flows that the Government of Spain has decreed will mean the lack of guarantees for irrigation in the Segura basin, reflected in data such as the 15.6% reduction in the area of irrigation, losses of almost 5,700 million euros and the destruction of 15,300 jobs.
For the Region of Murcia, and according to the professor, “the increase of each cubic meter per second of the ecological flows of the Tagus will mean economic losses of 149 million euros per year for irrigation, and 1,815 fewer jobs. Regarding the effects on the set of economic sectors, each increase in cubic meter per second would mean the loss of 3,669 jobs.
“There would also be effects on the supply, especially in the Commonwealth of Canals del Taibilla,” he says. Specifically, according to Melgarejo, there would be a rate increase from the current 0.69 euros per cubic meter to 1.04 euros per cubic meter, as a result of the increase in desalinated water.
“Countless technical errors”
The exhaustive analysis of the Decree approved by the Council of Ministers, criticized López Miras, “reveals innumerable technical errors.” Thus, he gave as an example that “it attributes to the Tagus volumes of water that do not correspond to it and inaccurate calculations, always with a single purpose: to hold the transfer responsible for any problem, because its elimination is the only objective with which that Decree was carried out”.
For López Miras “it is a clear case in which a conclusion is established with an obvious political purpose, and from there a story is built.” However, he showed his confidence “that everything is resolved favorably for the Region of Murcia, which is as much as saying that it is resolved favorably for Spain, because the Tagus-Segura benefits all of Spain.”
In its appeal, the regional government states “that it has not been proven that the state of the Tagus water masses, in the section affected by the transfer, is bad from an environmental point of view, nor that the increase in minimum flows ensure a better ecological state”, informed López Miras.
From a scientific point of view, the increase in circulating flow is “irrelevant” for the environment, according to the president. However, this increase translates into “significant losses and a significant reduction in availability for the Segura basin”, which is what the regional Executive seeks to avoid.
The irrigators value the “coordination” of the Region, Alicante and Andalusia
The president of the Central Union of Irrigators of the Tajo-Segura Aqueduct (Scrats), Lucas Jiménez, highlighted the “unity of action” demonstrated by the regional government, the Junta de Andalucía, the Alicante Provincial Council and Scrats himself at the time to “coordinate” the four appeals that have been filed before the Supreme Court (TS) against the Royal Decree that represents a “drastic cut” to the transfer and that “is already causing negative effects.”
Jiménez announced that there is “a whole legal journey” ahead that will last “not less than a year and a half, approximately” until the Supreme Court resolves the appeals. “Let’s see what happens,” asked the president of Scrats, who admitted that it is “very difficult” to win a Contentious appeal to the State.
However, he warned that the central government “had never done anything so tortuously wrong” because “they have managed to get even the Council of State to make their actions ugly.” “We all know that it is very complicated and we have a very important task of study and work ahead of us,” according to Jiménez, who stressed that they have “all hopes” and “the best of intentions.”
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