New Spanish leaders shift on environment

Date: 18/03/04

THE Socialists who have swept to power in Spain look set to scrap the previous government's controversial north-south water transfer plan.

Cristina Narbona, a senior Socialist Party (PSOE) figure tipped to be the nation's next environment minister said: "The [water] transfer plan is history."

The €22 billion Spanish National Hydrological Plan was bitterly opposed by environmentalists and citizens, who have been battling it for years.

A request for €8 billion in EU structural funds was not met by the European Commission amid the controversy, although some funds were allegedly approved for a subsidiary project in the south-east.

But another part of the plan, the Ebro transfer, costing around €4 billion, stirred the most anger. It was designed to divert some 1,500 cubic hectometres per year of freshwater from the Ebro River in the north of Spain to the eastern and the south-eastern regions for use in intensive agriculture and tourism schemes.

Opponents said it would uproot thousands of people who farm rice, fish and mussels along the Ebro, submerge at least five towns and destroy a productive delta, protected by an international treaty, and a wetland for birds.

Narbona has said the incoming government would draw up a new water policy, to be based on better management, increased reliance on underground water supplies and greater investment in desalination - something citizens' and greens' groups had been calling for over the past several years.

PSOE's victory will likely bring other environmental policy changes in its wake, including a commitment to comply with the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

The incoming Spanish Government looks likely to abandon the previous Government's controversial National Hydrological Plan which would have diverted freshwater from the Ebro River to the eastern and south-eastern regions of Spain.