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Portugal's Alqueva Dam: Economic Boon or Eco-Catastrophe?
LISBON, Portugal, February 18, 2002 (ENS) - Portugal has completed a
major dam on the Guadiana River that will create Europe's largest
artificial lake and is expected to boost the economy of one of the
continent's poorest rural areas.
Conservationists say the 96 meter (317 foot) high dam is Europe's biggest
environmental catastrophe of the 21st century. They claim the dam will lead
to desertification and pollution in one of the last wild woodland valleys
of Europe, and charge that it destroys essential habitat of the continent's
rarest mammal, the Iberian lynx.
Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio
Guterres (Photo courtesy Office of the Prime Minister)
Prime Minister Antonio Guterres closed the sluice gates at the Alqueva Dam
in a ceremony Friday near the town of Alqueva, 150 kilometers (90 miles)
southeast of Lisbon.
On Saturday, the waters of the Guadiana River will begin to submerge the
valley behind the dam. Over the next four years the Alqueva Dam will create
a reservoir about 80 kilometers (50 miles) long. More than one million
trees were logged in the valley that will be flooded because decaying
underwater plants could pollute the reservoir.
The Portuguese government and the European Commission say a 240 megawatt
hydroelectric power station at the dam will generate electricity, and the
project will provide irrigation and drinking water for the dry region.
People living in villages on the reservoir site were moved to newly built
towns, along with their cemeteries.
But environmentalists argue that there is no justification for the dam,
pointing out that the area's existing irrigation network is used at less
than 50 percent capacity.
The company constructing the dam, Empresa de Desenvolvimento e
Infraestruturas de Alqueva S.A. (EDIA) has been promoting the new dam as a tourist
facility at international trade fairs, a move conservationists say proves
that the dam and its enormous lake are being built more for wealthy
investors than for the poor farmers of the region.
 The Alequeva Dam is erected on the Guadiana River
(Photo courtesy EDIA)
Dozens of multi-million euro planning applications have been submitted to
local authorities by multinational corporations to build new golf courses,
casinos, health spas, private island resorts and water sports facilities in
and around the new lake.
Campaigners against the dam say that a 135 square kilometer area inhabited
by the highly endangered Iberian lynx was illegally cleared to make way for
the dam. The environmental group SOS LYNX, which first alerted the
international community to official documents showing confirmed lynx
sightings where the dam was built, unsuccessfully filed official complaints
with the European Commission demanding that work be suspended.
The ruins of a Roman fortress from the 1st century B.C. will be submerged
along with prehistoric Stone Age engravings that experts say could date
back 20,000 years.
Robert Bednarik, president of the International Federation of Rock Art
Organizations, said Friday that Portugal is committing cultural vandalism.
"The Guadiana valley rock art, one of the continent's largest art
galleries, comprises the artistic documents of countless anonymous artists
representing millennia," he said. "They will first be covered by the waters
of the Alqueva dam, and then, as the dam ages, by billions of tons of
gravel and mud. They will be lost well and truly beyond recovery."
 Guadiana River before the dam
(Photo courtesy EDIA)
But Prime Minister Guterres has said that "the importance of Alqueva to the
national economy" means that the dam and submersion will go ahead
regardless of the environmental consequences.
In 1997, the European Commission agreed to spend ECU 203 million from the
European Structural Funds for the Specific Programme for the Integrated
Development of the Alqueva Area (PEDIZA), which includes the Alqueva Dam.
The aim of the PEDIZA Programme is to mobilize around the construction of
the dam all those factors that can contribute to economic development so as
eventually to overcome the under-development from which the region has
suffered for decades. In the long term, the PEDIZA Programme is expected to
create 20,000 jobs.
In order to ensure maximum environmental protection, the European
Commission and Portuguese authorities agreed that numerous environmental
studies would be carried out. On the basis of these studies a multi-annual
plan for environmental management was drawn up. Its implementation will be
monitored jointly by the national authorities and the Commission.
The PEDIZA Programme contains a series of specific environmental provisions
intended to ensure water quality, the preservation of natural areas for
animals and plants, and the ecological flow of the River Guadiana. Funding
is earmarked in the programme for implementation of these environmental
measures.
In a monitoring committee, on which environmental non-governmental
organizations will be represented, a special technical group will be set up
for environmental matters which will closely monitor the implementation of
the environmental measures provided for in the PEDIZA Programme.
 Iberian lynx in Portugal (Photo courtesy Lynx
pardinus)
But Siobhan Mitchell, international spokeswoman for SOS LYNX, has tried for
years to stop the Alqueva Dam. "This area is one of the most ecologically
rich in Europe," she says. "Official reports show that several species of
animals, plants and fish found nowhere else in the world will be lost
forever because of this dam."
The Iberian lynx is the most endangered cat species, as well as the only
endemic large carnivore in Europe. The World Wide Fund for Nature, which
has joined SOS LYNX in a complaint to the European Commission that the
Alqueva Dam is in breach of the EU Habitats Directive says only 50 lynx
remained in Portugal when the last studies were carried out on its
population in 1988. Fewer than 1,150 lynx then were found in Spain.
Mitchell says, "It is incredible that when such a unique species as the
Iberian lynx is teetering on the brink of extinction, that one of its prime
habitats should be deliberately destroyed."
Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. All rights reserved. |
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