Country hasn’t seen this much rain for 20 years
With rain still falling to the end of this month, minister of environment and energy Maria da Graça Carvalho visited the Algarve last week to announce the easing of restrictions on water use and consumption.
Rain was very much in evidence as the outgoing social democrat minister admitted that dams in the south haven’t seen so much water for 20 years.
Even the most depleted – Santa Clara, thanks to intensive monocultures/ greenhouse cultivation and Bravura, both of which had been at critical lows for years, have started ‘turning the corner’ on previous ‘dead levels’ when consumption should have been stopped altogether.
Thus, restrictions brought in because of years of reduced rainfall, have been eased in all sectors. Now there are just 5% ‘reductions’ demanded of agriculture, domestic supplies and tourism.
Nonetheless, Ms Carvalho stressed some preventive measures need to be maintained, in the interests of rethinking water use generally, and in the context of the government’s ‘Water that Unites’ programme.
“Saving, reducing consumption, reusing water, combatting losses, optimising resource management, increasing the system’s resilience and investing in increased capacity in regions where this is necessary, such as the Algarve”, are all still very relevant, she said in Faro. “We need to increase the available capacity in the Algarve”.
The Water that Unites programme includes “around 29 measures for the Algarve region, with some additional funding of €272 million”, she recalled.
For now, the situation in the Algarve has been evolving very favourably: the region currently has 99.3 cu hectometres (hm3) more water stored than it had during the same period in 2024, and there are conditions, said the minister, for a possible further easing of current restrictions across the board.
The restrictions were initially brought in in February 2024, under the PS Socialist government of António Costa. The incoming social democrats then eased them somewhat and embarked on a series of investments to increase water availability.
What happens next will very much depend on which party/ coalition wins the May legislative elections, and how the weather develops.
Certainly, for the moment, rain is due to come and go until the end of the month at least. Freak weather phenomena have dogged the country, with the latest ‘surprise’ coming in the form of a mini-tornado in Albufeira, which ripped the tiles of an old fish selling building on the seafront at Praia dos Pescadores, causing a lot of mess, and a degree of consternation. Luckily, no one was hurt and the howling wind quickly dissipated.
