Madrid set to win deal on water transfer

By Karen Carstens

Date: 11/12/03

THE European Commission looks set to approve a water transfer scheme that is part of the Û22 billion Spanish National Hydrological Plan (SNHP) backed by Madrid, but bitterly opposed by green groups and citizens, who have been battling the controversial project for years.

The Spanish government has said it will not go ahead with the full project unless it can secure EU subsidies, but the Commission has repeatedly postponed a decision on the matter.

The full SNHP scheme entails some 800 projects and would involve the construction of around 120 dams to divert billions of gallons of water from the Ebro, the nation's second longest river, from the north-east to the Mediterranean coast.

Now, however, a subsidiary project in the south-east of the country is probably about to get EU funding.

The Jùcar-Vinalopo water transfer scheme appears to have been given the green light by DG Environment and is due to be rubberstamped by the regional policy directorate this month.

Listed in an annex to the SNHP, it would involve the transfer of 80 cubic hectometres of water annually from the Jùcar river over 67 kilometres to the area of Murcia, Alicante and Benidorm, where the water will be used for irrigation, as well as tourism projects, such as golf courses.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) claims that the transfer is part of the Ebro scheme, but that the Spanish government presented it as an independent project to avoid a full environmental evaluation of the SNHP project.

"Contrary to what the Spanish government claims, this is a plan which experts agree is aimed at supporting the Ebro transfer," said Paloma Agrosat, a WWF policy officer on the SNHP.

"Getting taxpayers' money through the back door to subsidize another major water transfer which is still under evaluation is a dangerous precedent and a bad example to future member states. The Commission should know better."

But Pierre Jerome-Henin, spokesman for Regional Policy Commissioner Michel Barnier, said that the only controversial aspect of the SNHP scheme is the Ebro river transfer itself.

While a DG Environment source confirmed that the project was definitely "in the pipeline" for approval - although it may still be awaiting a final signature from Director-General Catherine Day - the regional directorate confirmed that the project definitely had been approved.

WWF spokesman Louis Belanger told this newspaper that DG Environment had secured a pledge from the Spanish government that "not a single drop of the Ebro would be touched" for the Jùcar-Vinalopo project as a precondition for approving it. "But this will not be the case," he insisted. "The Ebro will be affected."

Opponents of the SNHP plan say it threatens to uproot thousands of people who farm rice, mussels and fish along the Ebro. At least five towns would be submerged by the dams' reservoirs.

They would also destroy the productive Ebro delta, a national park protected by an international treaty and one of Europe's most crucial remaining wetlands for birds.

Last Sunday (7 December), some 3,000 'anti-transfer' protesters gathered around the Council of Ministers building in Brussels to demonstrate against the SNHP, encircling it in a human chain dubbed the 'Hug to Europe'.

A blue bus has been parked in the EU quarter's Place Jourdan for weeks to draw attention to the matter, and 139 MEPs have signed a manifesto for a 'New Water Culture'.