Huge Dam Proposal Provokes a Storm of Controversy in Spain

Cowbells clink, a church bell chimes, a tractor revs its motor in the distance. Not much else breaks the dreamy silence in Eres, an 18th century hamlet set in the verdant Gallego Valley of Spain’s Pyrenees Mountains.

Eres will be deathly quiet if Spain’s government has its way. The village is slated to disappear under a sea of water that is to flood through this northern valley, drowning thousands of acres of almond and olive groves.

The village’s 75 inhabitants are under threat from the Biscarrues dam, one of 120 reservoirs envisioned along with a mammoth transfer of river water under a new eight-year National Water Plan that has become one of the most controversial pieces of Spanish legislation in years.

Opponents say the proposal flies in the face of trends in Western nations that no longer consider dams and river transfers as preferred solutions to water problems.

The conservative government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar argues the $23-billion project will end the historic imbalance between Spain’s water-abundant north and the parched south, one of Europe’s most arid regions.

Unveiled by the Environment Ministry in September and approved by the Cabinet in February, the project is now before Parliament, and the governing Popular Party expects its majority to turn it into law by summer.

The hottest controversy centers on the proposed siphoning of 26 billion gallons of water from the delta of the northeastern Ebro River, the country’s most voluminous. Most of the water is to be pumped to the semiarid but intensely farmed southeastern regions of Valencia, Almeria and Murcia.

Billing it as an “act of justice” and a “historic milestone,” Aznar told farmers the plan would make Spain “more royal, more unified, more caring, more just and [create] more opportunities for all.”

The government’s publicity campaign seems to have backfired. The project has split public opinion in a way few can recall and has outraged opposition parties, hundreds of academic specialists and the entire array of environmental and ecological groups.

Most of Spain’s 17 regional governments have endorsed the plan, but four, most notably Aragon and Catalonia, reject it. One newspaper survey found only four of every 10 Spaniards polled support it.

Demonstrations by opponents have drawn hundreds of thousands of people in Madrid, Barcelona and Zaragoza, and foes are petitioning the European Union to make its own study before providing an expected third of the project’s costs.

For many, it is more than just shifting water from a wet place to a dry one.

“I’m too old to move now,” said Jesus Corrales, 76, who has farmed almonds and olives in Eres as long as he can remember. His house will be 100 feet underwater if the plan goes through.

“My son’s buried in the cemetery out back. . . . This dam is just going to wash our lives away,” he said.

Other dams would flood several more villages in the Pyrenees as well as a 12-mile stretch of the medieval religious pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Sentimental feelings apart, for many people the plan is an assault on the environment. They contend it is designed to channel money to the country’s powerful construction and electrical sectors, which would undertake the project.

Environmentalists point to California as an example of a region with similar water problems that now considers dam building an outdated solution. The state has begun dismantling dams built years ago.

“If countries considering spending this amount of money on major water transfers were to invest it in water efficiency, they would gain a lot more water at a much lower cost,” said Lester Brown, founder of Worldwatch Institute, a Washington-based group that studies global environmental issues.

Spain’s 40 million people rank among the world’s top five water consumers. More than 70% of the water goes for irrigation, nearly half of which is lost to evaporation, leakage and other inefficiencies. Many of the same problems occur in municipal water systems, experts say.

Brown says major transfer and dam projects are the stuff of developing, population-growing nations, not ones such as Spain with a declining population and a high standard of living.

Marcelino Iglesias, president of the Aragon region, through which much of the Ebro flows, is adamant that blocking the plan will “be doing the country a great service.”

Aragon, with 1 million inhabitants and a history of emigration, is one of Spain’s most neglected regions. Much of its farmland has been lost to desertification, and many of its towns suffer annual water restrictions just like those in Almeria and Murcia.

Iglesias says Aragon’s water needs are being ignored in favor of big agribusiness and that the water plan will lead to greater inequality between interior and coastal Spain.

“Transfers and dams must be a last resort,” he said. “Less environmentally traumatic and economically cheaper solutions should be tried first.”

Francisco Martinez Gil, a hydrogeology professor among the 200 academics who signed a petition to the government calling for a halt to the plan and greater public debate, says the proposal is built on outdated views of water resources.

“Clearly, we could grow tomatoes 24 hours a day in the Sahara if we built dams and channeled water down there,” Martinez Gil said. “But you have to ask: ‘Do we need that? And at what cost economically and environmentally?’ ”

The bulk of the water drawn off from the Ebro will go to southern Murcia and Almeria, Spain’s most arid regions. They have become Europe’s year-round garden, enjoying a tremendous economic boom in plastic greenhouse agriculture over the past 10 years.

Farm leaders in the region insist they need more water, and many towns in the region endure frequent water restrictions. But opponents--political, academic and environmentalist alike--claim that if the regions properly managed the water they already have, they would have more than enough.

In Murcia alone, authorities acknowledge that nearly half the existing irrigation is illegal.

The government says it will give environmental protection a priority and that much of the plan’s money will go toward modernizing irrigation systems and urban water distribution. Opponents don’t believe it.

Antoni Canicio, a geologist, contends the project will be the death knell for the Ebro’s already fragile delta, which is renowned for its variety of bird life.

“The whole plan is based on the premise that the Ebro has excess water, but it’s well known that all basin excesses are likely to disappear over the coming decades because of global warming,” he said.