Friday, March 29

Neighborhood associations and environmentalists, against a new reservoir to supply water to Vigo

Members of various environmental associations have joined neighborhood organizations in rejecting the construction of a new reservoir on the Oitavén river and the transfer of water to supply the city of Vigo and the south of the province of Pontevedra. It is the reaction to a study of alternatives commissioned to a company and that the Miño-Sil Hydrographic Confederation has sent to the Vigo City Council and the Xunta de Galicia. The document suggests building a new dam on the river course -there is already one, the Eiras-, capturing water at the confluence of the Oitavén and Verdugo rivers and also transferring a quantity from the Miño to the Zamáns dam.

In an assembly held at the Sociocultural Center of Forzáns (Ponte Caldelas, province of Pontevedra), associations such as Greenpeace, Adega, Asociación pola Defensa da Ría, Petón do Lobo and Ecologistas en Acción conveyed their support for the critical stance of various groups in the area and joined a manifesto already signed by a hundred entities, including mountain communities, neighborhood associations, water communities, rural women’s groups and cultural associations. This Sunday they protest in Ponte Caldelas to make their criticism visible.

The movement has chosen as spokesperson Pilar Fernández, the president of the Forzáns Neighborhood Association, which is where the new dam would be built. Among the actions to draw attention to their cause will be a day of cleaning and eradication of invasive species in the Oitavén River and the collection of data to carry out a study on the flora and fauna in the section that would be affected by the reservoir, between this parish of Ponte Caldelas and Vilano, in the municipality of Fornelos de Montes.

One of the environmental organizations critical of the study’s conclusions, Amigos da Terra, argues that the Oitavén and its main tributaries do not have enough surplus water to supply the reservoir “without putting the associated aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems at risk.” The ecological flow, she adds, is already “very punished” by the Eiras dam. The impact would reach, according to this association, the Vigo estuary and would be “a threat” to the “delicate balance that depends on the contribution of fresh water to balance salinity”, especially in summer.



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