Running out of water: Silves community “five months away” from being cut off
Around 80 families in Silves are at serious risk of running out of water after a private company that supplies the Algoz community of Foral with water from a borehole has announced it will stop providing the service at the start of next year.
Desperate for a solution, residents are urging Silves council to link the area to the municipal water network or provide a temporary solution until this is possible. However, the council has denied responsibility, and warned that linking Foral to the municipal network would be “complex, time-consuming, and costly”, making it “impossible” to provide a short- or medium-term solution.
The mind-bending predicament was made public last week, when the association that represents the residents of Foral sent out a statement to newsrooms warning that they are “five months away from running out of water.”
“Imagine waking up in the 21st century, in a developed country, a proud member of the European Union, only to find that you and your neighbours are about to lose access to something as basic and essential as water. This nightmare is about to become a reality for the residents of Foral, also known as Quinta da Larga Vista, a small but vibrant community of 80 households (close to 170 permanent residents) in the parish of Algoz,” said the statement released last Tuesday (July 30) by the Residents’ Association of the ‘Quinta da Larga Vista’ Allotment.
Providing further insight into the situation, the association explained that it received the worrisome news on July 23 that Fonte Pitoresca, Lda., the private company owned by the Gomes family, which used to own the plots where the Foral residences were built and which has been the community’s “lifeline”, will cease supplying water to Foral on December 31, 2024.
“For decades, we have depended on this water, both for domestic use and irrigation. Now, we face an uncertain future, as the company gives notice that it can no longer sustain its service due to restrictions and financial constraints,” the association says.
The Resident travelled to Foral this week to speak to its residents, who admit they are beginning to “lose sleep” over the matter.
“All we want is a solution,” says Gail Serra, a member of the residents’ association. “We have been contacting the local council about linking the area to the municipal water network since 2018, but our requests are always denied.”
In one of its replies to the residents’ association (which the association supplied to the Resident), the council estimated that linking the area to the municipal water network would cost around €2.4 million (excluding IVA), an investment that it said it was not planning to carry out in the short- and medium-term.
As another local resident, Bruno Santos, told us, being linked to the municipal water network is something that the community of Foral has wanted and has been fighting for for years. But with the looming threat of being completely cut off from any source of water, the issue has become their “number one priority”.
“I have a 10-year-old child,” Bruno told us. “What am I going to do if our taps run dry? How am I going to give him a bath, or cook for him?”
He also stresses that most of the families that live in Foral “are not particularly wealthy”, nor do they have homes with huge plots of gardens or pools, unlike some council representatives have allegedly suggested.
“I have a regular job at a telecommunications company, my wife is unemployed, and we have a child. We are not millionaires who can dig our own boreholes. And even if we were, this wouldn’t be the right solution considering the extreme situation of drought,” the local resident told us.
Making this an even less feasible solution are the major projects that have been approved near the community, including a “massive 96-hectare solar farm” to the north, described as an “area crucial for aquifer recharge”.
“This project threatens to deplete our already stressed groundwater sources further, so we are fighting this in court,” the residents stated in their initial press release.
Meanwhile, an “industrial-scale avocado farm” to the south and “large-scale citrus farms all around us” are “sucking up huge amounts of water from our shared source of groundwater,” they added.
According to the association, it is “unacceptable that the council refuses to provide us with water, while approving or turning a blind eye to projects that jeopardise our existing sources”.
The residents say council representatives have also suggested hiring firefighters to supply them with water, but that they have been told by the local fire station that this would be unachievable, particularly in the summer when its full attention is on preventing and fighting fires.
The residents have already hired a lawyer and are evaluating their next steps, which they say will depend on how the municipal council reacts to their latest demands for action. If the council continues to dodge responsibilities, they say they will consider more dire action such as protests at local events.
For now, their fight focuses on achieving one of the following goals: the connection of Foral to the municipal water network “as soon as practically possible”; and if Fonte Pitoresca ceases its service, the municipal council of Silves “must take over the existing infrastructure or provide a temporary solution until we are connected to the municipal network.”
A petition has also been created urging the council to act.
Council denies responsibility
In a written response to the Resident, the municipal council of Silves has guaranteed that providing water to the Foral community is not its responsibility and that linking the area to the municipal water network would be “complex, time-consuming and costly”.
Explaining its stance on the subject, the council states that the area of Foral was “previously part of the National Ecological Reserve (REN)”, having been reclassified as a “rural settlement with the implementation of the revised Silves Municipal Master Plan (PDM) on January 12, 2021, thereby regularising all previously existing urban occupation.”
“As this area is not served by the public water supply network, the licensing or legalisation of any urban occupation requires property owners to take responsibility for adopting autonomous solutions for human water consumption,” the council says, putting the responsibility of finding a resolution on residents’ shoulders – a responsibility which they told the Resident they refuse to bear.
“To provide Foral with a public water supply network, it is necessary to restructure the Southern Zone of the São Bartolomeu de Messines Subsystem by reinforcing existing reservoirs, installing water mains, constructing a new reservoir, and installing a pressurisation system dedicated to that location,” the municipal authority says, stressing that it has already made “significant public investments” over the years to expand the public water supply network in the borough.
“It should be noted that the remote location of Quinta da Bela Vista and the terrain’s orography complicate water supply to the area. Developing and implementing technical solutions is complex, time-consuming, and financially costly, making it impossible to provide a short- or medium-term solution. However, all Foral residents committed to having an autonomous water supply system when licensing or legalising their homes,” the council says.
Nonetheless, the local authority says that a meeting was held on May 24, 2024, at Silves town hall with the residents’ association, where it was agreed that the council would mediate talks with the national environmental agency (APA) to “find a solution for human consumption through the potential licensing of underground water sources, provided the association supplies essential data for the technical study of the solutions to be adopted.”
The council also accuses the association of failing to attend previous meetings scheduled by the municipality of Silves, which would have been attended by the developer of the nearby solar plant and could have been used to “gauge the developer’s willingness to invest in improving the quality of life for Foral residents, addressing their legitimate concerns and aspirations.”
“Finally, it is essential to clarify that the municipality of Silves, except for its urban planning licensing powers, is not responsible for the registration or permission of agricultural activities, contrary to what is incorrectly stated in the press release signed by the Quinta da Larga Vista Residents’ Association,” it adds.
Nevertheless, the council says that it “remains available to meet with the Foral Residents’ Association and other stakeholders involved in the process.”
By MICHAEL BRUXO
