New plan to recover the Daimiel Tables: why previous million-dollar programs did not stop the disaster

The new recovery plan for the Tablas de Daimiel National Park, in which The central government and Castilla-La Mancha have been working for a few months, may be the last chance for the battered natural space. There have been other attempts to reverse the deterioration of these magnificent floodplains, vital for many waterfowl, that have not worked. In 1973 it was classified as a national park, but the aquifer has continued to empty: more water is extracted than it recharges, mainly due to agricultural activity. Nor have attempts such as the ambitious Alto Guadiana plan worked, initially endowed with more than 4,000 million, of which only 70 were invested. The 2008 crisis swallowed it up.

The new initiative must undertake changes in an agricultural model to reduce the current deficit of 2,000 cubic hectometers suffered by the aquifer and for it to once again flow through the Ojos del Guadiana and fill the national park. With these emptying figures, “we cannot think that in the short term we are going to recover Las Tablas,” warned Samuel Moraleda, president of the Guadiana Hydrographic Confederation (CHG), last week in a few days on the natural space at the Institute of Engineers. It is now a matter of bringing the mission to a successful conclusion and ensuring that a series of errors that have led to the current situation are not repeated.

Warning signs that did not stop the deterioration

The first big blow was allowed by the law of July 1956 with the canalization of 182 kilometers of riverbed, which destroyed 25,000 hectares of flood plains, to reconvert them to agricultural use. When it becomes a national park, its total desiccation is avoided, but it had already begun to be irrigated with groundwater. Irrigated wheat, barley, corn and oats are planted without any type of planning or control. In 1984 the Ojos del Guadiana, the spring through which the aquifer emerges naturally, stopped flowing; a water that later forms the tables and is considered the birth of the Guadiana River. Concern began to spread and the aquifer was provisionally declared overexploited in 1987 and a year later transfers from the Tajo-Segura were authorized to supply the national park. It is not of much use: in 1994 the groundwater reached the worst level in its history and the aquifer was considered permanently overexploited. This allows the granting of more irrigation rights to be prohibited and the Guadiana Hydrographic Confederation (CHG) to limit extractions depending on the level of groundwater that exists each year.

In 2009, the peat (subsoil) of the national park caught fire, as oxygen entered through the cracks that appeared in the ground due to the lack of flooding. The situation is very serious and water from the transfer is sent through the La Mancha pipeline, an infrastructure still unfinished to supply drinking water to the population of the upper Guadiana. Emergency wells are also opened and continue to be used when it is suspected that the fire may recur; this year, for example.

Failed millionaire investments

In the late 1990s, the Income Compensation Program was launched, which offered money to farmers for giving up a percentage of the irrigation to which they were entitled. 250 million euros were invested, and consumption was reduced from 500 cubic hectometers (hm³) to 400, but the money ran out, the plan was closed and watered again, because it did not encourage agricultural reconversion. “A fortune for nothing,” says Alberto Fernández, from the conservation NGO WWF.

In January 2008, the Alto Guadiana Special Plan, a very ambitious instrument, which proposes reducing irrigation with the acquisition of land and water rights and generating sustainable development. The planned investment was 4,000 million euros in 20 years, “but the economic crisis and changes in Government took it away,” explains Civil Engineer Antonio Serrrano, who was part of the team that promoted this plan. Only 70 million were invested in the acquisition of irrigation rights for 15 cubic hectometers. But most of the owners of these farms did not irrigate, so they did not extract water from the aquifer and did not affect the environment, as verified by WWF with remote sensing. The hydrographic confederation has also purchased irrigation rights in the vicinity of the national park.

WWF developed two projects in which 150 irrigators were advised, obtaining a saving of 3 hm³ just by adjusting the irrigation water. But after time, Fernández visited cooperatives and irrigation communities and everything “had been forgotten, the good results did not penetrate the philosophy of La Mancha culture.”

Changing crops to others that require less water is not enough

Although drip irrigation is used and woody crops such as vines are used (which is also irrigated, but requires less water), the decreases in underground masses continue to be the same as when herbaceous crops such as alfalfa or corn were planted. , which require much more irrigation. In the area, farmers could extract 735 hm³, which is what they are legally recognized for, but the Confederation limits it each year depending on the level of the aquifer. With 10 years of continued drought, they can currently extract 200 hm³, but, even so, the emptying continues. There are 26,862 legal wells (22 per hectare). But to these we must add the illegal ones who, according to WWF calculations, irrigate 52,000 hectares irregularly. Added to this is that there are farmers who trick the flow meters and irrigate excessively.

Should the water from the Tajo-Segura transfer be used to keep Las Tablas alive?

Reestablishing the connection between groundwater and surface water in Las Tablas, if achieved, will be a decades-long journey. There are people who advocate transferring water from the Tajo-Segura transfer, which is authorized by law for the national park, as the only way to keep them alive. A method that environmental associations reject and that the Ministry for the Ecological Transition is not in favor of, which considers that it should be something exceptional. However, the Minister of Sustainable Development of Castilla-La Mancha, Mercedes Gómez, recalled in the sessions of the Institute of Engineers that in the Levant they have the possibility of desalination, something that does not occur in their territory. At this time, the Tablas de Daimiel, immersed in the tenth year of drought, depend on increasingly less predictable rainfall.

Act in the entire Alto Guadiana aquifer system

Las Tablas de Daimiel are located in the main discharge area of ​​an enormous aquifer system, the Alto Guadiana, which occupies an area of ​​16,000 square kilometers. Until now, to solve the problem of protected space, the situation of the three most immediate and largest aquifers has been taken into account, above all: Mancha Occidental I and II and Rus Valdelobos, with an area of ​​6,112 square kilometers. But what happens in the rest of the basin influences Las Tablas, so measures would also have to be taken beyond the immediate environment.

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