Algarve desalination plans: “authorities finally appreciate high costs involved”
Portugal Resident
Sustainable water platform reiterates alternatives to “total lack of logic in management of public money”
With the costs of the desalination plant planned for Albufeira now seeing Algarve councils totting up the potential damage to consumers’ pockets, PAS – the sustainable water platform – has issued a statement, to reiterate all the other measures that should be taken before desalination is considered.
PAS stresses that the position taken recently by the president of Algarve intermunicipal community AMAL, “on the lack of funds to finance the construction” of the plant is “significant”.
“It seems that finally entities have reached the logical conclusion that this investment is not appropriate given the high cost involved for the effects it will achieve.
“In this situation, in particular, one can see the total lack of logic in the management of public money. Any business plan requires an economic feasibility study. If the plan was approved assuming a certain cost and now the cost has doubled, it is clear that the plan cannot be implemented as it is no longer viable”.
PAS equally considers there is “another lack of logic” in that AMAL seems still to justify the construction of a desalination plant “given the extreme dry situation we have experienced in recent years”, but believes easing restrictions on water consumption in the Algarve “was a balanced decision”.
How can this be? Does the region lack water, or not? “Or do we only need to justify the construction of a desalination plant, and other major engineering/ civil construction projects?
Different solutions are urgent, insists the platform, made up of environmental groups, experts and retired university lecturers.
Indeed, PAS has been outlining these ‘other solutions’ for some time.
“Therefore”, says the statement. “PAS welcomes the launch of the new programme, worth €6.6 million, to support investments within the scope of “Measure SM1 – Reducing Water Losses in the Urban Sector”, with financing from the Recovery and Resilience Program ( PRR).
“The reduction of losses in distribution networks in the urban and agricultural sectors, along with the reuse of wastewater, are some of the many other paths that PAS has, from the beginning, been defending as a solution to the problem, without creating new social, economic and environmental problems”, recalls the statement.
It is becoming increasingly clear that this huge undertaking – involving compulsory purchases of land people do not want to lose, the laying of pipes through ‘earthquake sensitive areas’, and the undeniable polluting of the sea (with untreated brine and associated chemical sludge) – is losing its importance on the government’s ‘to do list’. Environment minister Maria da Graça Carvalho has already mentioned the high cost which “someone has to pay for”; the deputy minister for territorial cohesion has already mentioned that certain projects costed into the PRR will have to be ‘reformulated’... The initial trumpeting that a desalination plant would be fully financed by the PRR (Brussels’ funded Plan for Recovery and Resilience) has long since been seen to have been overly optimistic.
For all those adamant that a desalination plant discharging its questionable byproducts into one of Albufeira’s most idyllic bays is a ‘bad plan’, hope is building.
natasha.donn@portugalresident.com
The post Algarve desalination plans: “authorities finally appreciate high costs involved” appeared first on Portugal Resident written by Natasha Donn
