The National Federation of Irrigation Communities (Fenacore) warns that the lack of investment in regulation works “will aggravate the threat posed by droughts for Spain, after water reserves have fallen to 44.8% again, that is, almost 15 points below the average of the last 10 years,” he said in a statement.
In this scenario, Fenacore regrets that only two out of every ten euros of the investment foreseen in the previous hydrological plans have been executed, so that a high percentage of the regulation works and hydraulic infrastructures of general interest have not been carried out.
Criticizes ecological flows
In this context, Fenacore indicates that desertification “has become one of the biggest environmental problems, affecting 37% of the planet’s land surface and impacting 3,000 million people.” In the specific case of Spain, according to the Ministry, the country has 74% dry areas and more than 9 million hectares classified as high or very high risk of desertification.
He considers that the regulation works “are fundamental when it comes to combating droughts by allowing water to be stored in the rainy season to distribute it and use it when needed, which at the moment would be especially relevant for the basins of the southern half of Spain , which are at about 30% of their capacity.
He criticizes “harshly” that the hydrological plans on which water management will depend in the coming decades “establish proposals for ecological flows to bring the functioning of the river closer to its natural regime, which would nullify the regulation function that our reservoirs fulfill, to empty them, representing a serious threat to the satisfaction of demands, or what is the same, to food production».