Tavira, Faro, Portugal, Oct. 14, 2024 (Lusa) - Protecting the city of Tavira from floods and making use of hydro-agriculture are the objectives of the construction of a small multi-purpose dam, the tender for which has already been launched, the association of irrigators in the eastern Algarve announced on Monday.
The president of the Association of Beneficiaries of the Eastern Algarve Irrigation Plan (ABPRSA), Macário Correia, told Lusa that the structure, on the Alportel stream, which rises in Barranco do Velho (Loulé) and flows into Tavira, in the district of Faro, will have "agriculture, urban consumption and flood fighting" as its intended multiple purposes.
In a statement, the association said it had signed a protocol ‘a few weeks ago’ with the Portuguese Environment Agency, with the support of the Environmental Fund, to ‘resume the flood control solution’, but also including, "in the current context of water scarcity, the utilisation of water as a reinforcement of the Odeleite-Beliche system, for irrigation and public supply".
The undertaking not only protects the city of Tavira from floods, ensuring the ecological flow from Soalheira do Pereiro to S. Domingos (tidal waters), but also makes it possible to use the water for human consumption and "some reinforcement of the irrigation system, without increasing areas, but to stabilise reserves in times of drought", says the association.
Macário Correia explained that "the dam is close to the Santo Estêvão reservoir [a parish in the Tavira district], which is the central reservoir that serves the Algarve water utility, Águas do Algarve" and is used "for human consumption", but "also serves the irrigation association".
"The water that is harnessed from this stream prevents it from reaching Tavira and devastating the town. And by putting it there, it will be used, depending on needs, for urban consumption or agriculture," added the president of ABPRSA, who predicts “a storage of around 10 cubic hectometres in an average year in a scenario of reduced rainfall”.
The association emphasised that, "with the tender now launched", it is estimated that the "project and environmental impact study will be updated during the second half of 2025", after which, "depending on the conditions studied", the execution project will be carried out.
In the note, ABPRSA recalled that "in the 1930s, work began on what would be the Algarve's first dam after Roman times", next to the " course of the Alportel stream, seven kilometres from Tavira", but "difficulties with a cofferdam and the economic crisis caused by the Spanish Civil War interrupted the work".
"At the beginning of this century, due to the floods of 1989 and 2000, Tavira city council and INAG (Water Institute) promoted a preliminary study of the dam and its environmental impact, which was published in 2009," pointed out the association of eastern Algarve irrigators.
The association recalled that the "devastation" caused by the floods in downtown Tavira in 1969 and 1989 led to damage to the Roman bridge and considered that the "rise in sea levels in the context of ongoing climate change" could facilitate the "conditions for aggravating the risk" of flooding in that Algarve town.
That's why, last June, the Cabinet Resolution for the effects of drought ‘addressed this work’ with the ‘multiple’ objectives of ‘storing water, creating an ecological flow and defending the town’, which, together with hydro-agricultural use, led the association to approve the tender.
MHC/AYLS // AYLS
Lusa
