Wednesday, May 3, 2023, 3:11 p.m.
The president of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig, continues with his campaign to win the favor of the irrigators. After the announced appeal against the transfer cut, he now joins the subsidies for desalinated water to alleviate the extra economic effort that farmers will have to make to continue planting their farms. To the reduction already approved by the central government, the Generalitat will add another of about 10 cents.
As the latest pertinent reports become available, the Valencian president assured during a meeting with businessmen in Orihuela, the aid will be approved “imminently” by the Consell. According to him, this reduction will be added to the Madrid subsidy, so the final price per cubic meter that farmers belonging to 26 irrigation communities will have to pay will be 0.22 euros per cubic meter.
The Transfer Irrigation Union (Scrats), however, is skeptical and classifies this measure within the electoral period and as another response from Puig to Madrid’s breach of the agreement to maintain the ecological flow of the Tagus at seven meters.
For the Palau tenant, on the other hand, this announcement is about “consolidating permanent support to place this resource at a competitive threshold”, so that irrigators can have additional water resources from desalination at an affordable price.
An extreme that nothing is shared by the irrigators who, even with this new discount, warn that the price will be around 0.44 cents, “four times more than what is paid under normal conditions for the water from the Transfer” , analyzes the president of Scrats, Lucas Jiménez.
The head of the aqueduct’s irrigators warns that the real price of water from the Torrevieja desalination plant (calculated by Acuamed) is 1.31 euros and that farmers, thanks to the help of Madrid, are reaching 55 cents. In the case of Torrevieja’s water, Jiménez warns, the Generalitat does not contemplate in that 0.22 euros that announces expenses such as VAT, tolls and losses in the network.
Ximo Puig, for his part, continues with a strategy that he qualifies as “water forever” and, in this sense, continues to stress the “unavoidable” nature of the Transfer while saying that the Consell will participate in the monitoring table of the execution of the works and control of the state of the water bodies “because negotiating is the only way to move forward”.
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