Europe's Largest Reservoir to Fill Despite Dispute
Copyright 2001 Reuters
October 23, 2001
By Daniel Silva
ALQUEVA, Portugal (Reuters) - Giant cranes over a dusty construction site mark the spot in the semi-arid Alentejo region that will become Europe's largest artificial lake when a vast dam project is finally completed at the end of the year.
The reservoir is scheduled to start filling with winter rains in January, but that has not silenced critics. They say the project, conceived during a rightist dictatorship in the 1950s when big public works were common, is old-fashioned, expensive and unnecessary.
``Grandiose projects of this nature are just not done anymore. They put a series of environmental values at risk without bringing clear benefits,'' said Francisco Ferreira, director of Quercus, one of the environmental groups that has led opposition to the dam.
The entire Alqueva project on the Guadiana River, about 110 miles southeast of Lisbon, includes 10 dams and will form an artificial lake covering 97 square miles.
Designed initially to provide water for a new industrial city, the official purpose of the project today is to irrigate the fields of the Alentejo, known as the grain belt of Portugal.
The government plans to build more than 2,485 miles of underground pipes over the next 20 years to irrigate 272,000 acres of farm land, or roughly 5.5 percent of the Alentejo's total agricultural land. Portugal is funding the $1.80 billion project jointly with the European Union (news - web sites).
The project will allow farmers to grow fruit and horticulture on a large scale for the first time in the Alentejo. The sparsely populated region of rolling grasslands and oak forests is one of the driest -- and poorest -- in Western Europe.
``The traditional Alentejo of dry crops that we know will gradually give way to an Alentejo of irrigated land,'' said Agriculture Minister Luis Capoulas Santos on a visit to the dam site last month.
TOURISM, NOT AGRICULTURE TO BENEFIT
Opponents believe the project is an unworkable relic of the country's isolationist past, dreamed up before Portugal joined the European Union in 1986 and faced limits on its output of irrigated crops.
``For this project to be feasible, you need a market for such crops and at the moment there is none,'' said Luis Mira, the president of the Confederation of Portuguese Farmers.