€90 million base price almost twice that originally touted
In spite of expert warnings and public protests, the government is sticking to its guns, insisting a €90 million desalination plant sited on private land in Albufeira is one of the answers to the region’s chronic lack of fresh water.
Friday saw the publication in State gazette Diário da República of a public tender for the construction of the plant – launched by water collection/ treatment and supply company Águas do Algarve – for almost double the price initially touted.
In the early days, Águas do Algarve talked about the project costing “around €50 million”. That figure is now €90 million according to the published tender, the funding of which is to be covered by recovery and resilience funding from Brussels.
The plan envisages an initial capacity for conversion of seawater into ‘sweetwater’ of 16 cubic hectometres (meaning 16 million cubic metres).
In a statement, Águas do Algarve said the project – due for completion by the end of 2026 – will be prepared to increase capacity to 24 cubic hectometres per year.
Lusa explains that 2026 “is the deadline for using funds from the ‘PRR’, the support programme created by the EU to revitalise Member States’ economies after the Covid-19 pandemic.
“This structural project for the region aims to guarantee the resilience of public supply to the population of the Algarve, particularly in periods of prolonged drought, by increasing water availability,” said Águas do Algarve’s statement, which referred to a “range of investments that Águas do Algarve is carrying out as part of the Algarve Water Efficiency Plan, under the PRR, and which will make it possible to increase the region’s water availability by more than 69 million cubic metres per year”.
Águas do Algarve’s president António Eusébio, quoted in the statement, emphasised the work carried out by employees, which made it possible to meet the demands and deadlines of this project, “at a time of high process complexity, inherent to the challenges that water scarcity has brought to the region”.
Lusa adds that “in addition to the desalination plant, municipal investments are also underway to combat network losses, reduce or eliminate irrigation in green spaces and use treated water to irrigate golf courses and clean streets.
“At the same time, there are plans and proposals to collect water from the River Guadiana at Pomarão and take it to the Odeleite dam, in the eastern Algarve, and to build a third dam in that part of the Algarve, on the Foupana stream”.
All the above plans have been waiting years for implementation – and according to independent technical experts, they are not the answer.
PAS, the platform for water sustainability in the Algarve, has been explaining exactly why desalination/ water exchanges and dams are not the way to go for the last two years.
The group has now made a new effort to persuade decision makers to fully understand this issue, and is pushing at European level for the desalination plant plan to be dropped, particularly, as according to PAS, it does not comply with the “do no harm” terms of PRR funding.
(Online material, from the United Nation’s Environment Programme explained in 2019 that “desalination is the process of removing salts from water and a by-product of the process is toxic brine which can degrade coastal and marine ecosystems unless treated. In most desalination processes, for every litre of potable water produced, about 1.5 litres of liquid polluted with chlorine and copper are created“. PAS’ technical report on the Albufeira plan refers to 60 500 cubic metres of toxic brine:“salt and grey waters with high level of heavy metals and chemicals”, being pumped back into the sea every day).
Meantime, citizens group Foreigners/ Estrangeiros Algarve is threatening to take legal steps to halt the project, and is currently working on an ‘awareness campaign’ to explain the ‘hidden issues’ (like the fact that tons of untreated brine removed from the seawater will be channeled back into the ocean via a 1.8 km pipeline off Paraíso beach every single day…)
At the same time, owners of one of the plots of land that Águas do Algarve seeks to compulsorily purchase (at a fraction of the market price) in order to install the desalination plant have said they will fight the purchase order through the courts “to the absolute end”.
