“They cannot move forwards with anything, due to legal challenges”
Mystification has greeted the government’s ‘announcement’ yesterday about the €108 million contract for a desalination plant in Albufeira.
As sources have told the Resident: “They cannot move forwards with anything, due to the legal challenges” that have been lodged.
None of the landowners whose property is in line for expropriation have heard anything further in this regard, either.
According to previous announcements by Águas do Algarve, expropriations – a number of which are challenged – were due to be ‘executed’ in September. That hasn’t happened.
But, “what is worse”, according to local sources “is that the cost of this desalination plant has increased” – which of course it has: the original price tag of €49 million had doubled by the time the tender was launched – now it is even higher.
This is already a factor that is causing local disquiet – not least among municipalities which can see the price tag for this infrastructure falling on populations.
In the opinion of residents who are firmly against the plant – by dint of the fact they will lose land, hopes and dreams – the government “is once again trying to manipulate people, and market a desalination plant that will be a disgrace for many” (not least the marine ecosystem).
Marine scientists Cláudia Sil – who gave an impassioned lecture on the folly of this project in the summer – has written over social media: “The Algarve will be drinking sea water: put another way, the Algarve will be drinking expensive, low-quality water: 16 hm3. Intensive agriculture, will use 85 hm3 of high-quality groundwater, plus what it already takes from dams (30 hm3), while the desalination plant will produce 1/4 of the water used by domestic consumers, including tourism, who use 50 hm3 from dams. Just do the maths (to realise this decision is stupid). Favoritism”.
And one of the people involved in fighting land expropriation has informed the Resident that “they cannot advance without an execution project and an archeological study, which they haven’t even mentioned this far.
“There are high probabilities that Roman ruins will be found in the river and on the lands” earmarked for construction/ pipelines. Thus, yesterday’s announcement very probably needs to be put into that perspective.
