Expert warns of downsides as joint venture races to clinch €90 million contract
Saturday saw yet another public meeting about the heavy-duty desalination plant seen as a must for the Algarve.
According to authorities – for this read Portugal’s leading political parties AD and PS, backed by water management company Águas do Algarve, and Portuguese Environment Agency APA – desalination has to be part of the future water planning for a region suffering from reduced rainfall.
But according to experts/environmentalists and everyday academics, it carries “far too many risks and downsides” to be considered ahead of other “much more sustainable options”.
So why the rush? The answer everywhere you look is the PRR – the Plan for Recovery and Resilience, funded by Brussels, which has seen billions of euros ploughed into Member States since the pandemic, but which has to be spent by a certain time.
In the case of Albufeira’s desalination plant, that means the total infrastructure has to be completed by 2026.
With two and a half years to go, nothing yet has seemingly moved forwards: compulsory purchase orders are due to be executed in September, but legal disputes by dissenting landowners still need to be settled, pipes laid, cliffsides excavated, and so on.
Inês Mesquita, president of the board of Al-Bio, an organic farming association based in Tavira, has told environmental journalist Bernardo Simões de Almeida that this has to be seen as a “window of opportunity”: it may simply be too tight a schedule to achieve.
Right now, it looks like a joint venture between Aquapor – a former Portuguese company now owned by French group Saur – and Spain’s GS Inima (an adjunct of Korean multinational GS E&C) are the hottest contenders for the €90 million tender launched earlier this year – and due to the various deadlines, a decision on the go-ahead will be imminent.
Saturday’s public meeting – presented as a debate – heard from biological engineer Cláudia Sil (a doctorate researcher with CCMAR, the Algarve University’s Centre for Marine Sciences) how the desalination plant project – including its sense of urgency – has been “fanned by misinformation/fake news”.
In Engineer Sil’s perspective, the Algarve “is not a desert”; it is not even as short of water as authorities like to impress: there is “ample water for domestic/urban use”, it is simply the “heavy demands of industrialised agriculture” (water-intensive projects that have brought multinationals flocking) that have “depleted underground reserves”.
Those multinationals will continue draining the region’s underground reserves (paying no one for the privilege), she added, while everyday families and local businesses will be the ones ‘tied into’ supplies boosted by desalination and “see utility bills soar”.
“They will become enormous. This is all about ‘agribusiness’; about extractive farming,” said Engineer Sil – her presentation outlining the 75% share of subterranean water in the region taken by agriculture.
The thrust of Cláudia Sil’s PowerPoint presentation was to highlight the “downsides of reverse osmosis desalination”, which, she stressed, “is not even the best technology available”.
Quarpesca, the fishing community in Quarteira, has already decried the plan, saying it “spells tragedy for the sector”, but Cláudia Sil drilled down into the science, explaining that by reducing ‘planktonic mass’, the plant would, in effect, help create a “veritable marine desert in an area (that for now at least) is the absolute opposite”.
Saturday’s debate also heard from PAS, the Platform for Sustainable Water, which has been warning of the “rush towards desalination ahead of so many other less environmentally damaging solutions”.
PAS’ interventions, this far, appear to have fallen on stony ground, thus the 13 NGOs and associations are now preparing a complaint to the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
PAS’ Rosa Guedes told the debate that “there are too many issues: 116 to be exact. Over a hundred ‘ifs and buts’ that make this project a farce. It needs to be properly investigated”.
“Best preservation of water resources”, assures Aquapor’s commercial director
While opponents view the process of desalination as one with a “heavy carbon footprint that does nothing to improve a region’s water capacity”, companies in the sector sing its praises, citing the many thousands of desalination projects in hundreds of countries.
Aquapor’s commercial director Carlos Rodrigues said in the recent press release announcing the joint bid for Albufeira: “We are very proud to announce this partnership, which allows Aquapor to combine its knowledge and expertise with GS Inima’s know-how and vast experience in desalination in different parts of the world.
“I am convinced that important synergies will be created for the development of efficient and innovative solutions, guaranteeing the best preservation of water resources in the Algarve.”
In its initial phase, the plant is expected to be able to convert 16 hectometres (millions of cubic metres) of seawater into ‘drinkable water’. A later phase is expected to increase capacity to 24 hectometres.
Negócios Online explains that Aquapor’s partner in the venture, the GS multinational, is considered “one of the most important desalination businesses on the world market. It has over five decades of experience in building desalination plants.”
According to the joint press release on the Albufeira bid, GS’ “desalination project in Atacama, Chile, was recognised as the best desalination plant in the world, supplying 70% of the population with an energy consumption of 2.8 kWh/m3, one of the lowest in the world.
“GS Inima has a successful track record in reverse osmosis desalination with more than 30 desalination plants built around the world, and this technology is one of the most sustainable and economical in the industry.
“The creation of this new joint venture confirms the shared vision between GS Inima and Aquapor of supplying the Algarve region with fresh water for consumption and industrial purposes, as well as our strong determination to better serve people’s well-being and the ecological environment,” emphasised GS Inima’s Business Development Director, Diego de Vera.
Thus, the race is on, and the time clock is running. At least two local companies are fighting authorities’ compulsory purchase orders – and without all the necessary land in the bag, the project cannot move forwards. In every sense of the word, this is a nailbiter.
Brine concerns
For each litre of fresh water produced, the desalination process creates 1.5 litres of brine, say researchers. This brine will be funnelled back into the ocean, along with chemical by-products 24/7. Concerns locally are that these ‘rejections’ will affect the integrity, not to say intention, behind the Pedra do Valado Marine Nature Park, only recently inaugurated along the coast, from Lagos to Albufeira.
By NATASHA DONN
