Teresa Ribera maintains the rise in ecological flows in the Tagus and the farmers of Levante will continue with their mobilizations
The meeting between Minister Teresa Ribera and the irrigators of the Tajo-Segura Transfer has ended in failure, since there has been no rapprochement regarding the Tajo Plan, nor have there been any signs that the Ministry is going to change the proposal to increase the ecological flows in the Tagus by 43%, according to the president of the Scrats, Lucas Jiménez, at the end of a tense meeting that lasted four hours in Madrid.
Accompanied by the Secretary of State and the General Director of Water, the minister has not put any proposal on the table, and the planning process continues. The only novelty is that the approval of the basin plans by the Council of Ministers is delayed until September, since there is still a lot of paperwork involved.
The irrigators of the Transfer will continue with their protests and mobilizations, since they have no hope that the Ministry will change its “immovable” position, according to Jiménez. “We are going to continue with our line of work,” he said. He was accompanied by the vice presidents of the Scrats Javier Berenguer and Fernando Rubio, as well as Juan Marín, from Lorca; Manuel Martínez del Campo, from Cartagena; and Julio Zapata, from Campotejar.
The Secretary of State, Hugo Morán, explained that it will be necessary to meet the new demands of Madrid and Ciudad Real, of 60 and 50 cubic hectometers per year respectively, so there will be fewer resources to transfer to Levante from the head of the Tagus. And in the same sense he said that the Albufeira Agreement with Portugal must be complied with, which annoyed the leaders of the Scrats more. They stressed that they have a lack of resources in the Segura basin and that they do not intend to cede even a cubic meter of the Transfer.
The General Director of Water, Teodoro Estrela, reported on the procedures to expand the production of desalination plants and connect them, starting with Águilas and continuing with Torrevieja and Valdelentisco.
“We have demanded that the minister forget the messages from regional leaders on one side and the other, and focus on trying to agree on a plan with another. That the bodies of water in the Tagus be treated accordingly, with eminently technical criteria, but not at the cost of causing serious socioeconomic damage in the Levante. Let’s see how they solve this nonsense between the two plans, “said Jiménez. «I leave desolate; not that I expected anything at this meeting, but they are determined to continue. My personal impression is that they have an immovable position », he added.
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