As of yesterday, the Government decided to ease the restrictions imposed on water consumption in agriculture and the urban sector of the Algarve, including tourism, put in place to face the drought in the region.
The decision was announced by Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, at a meeting of the drought monitoring committee, in Faro.
“The Government decided to revoke resolution 26A of 2024, of February 20th, and in the coming weeks another resolution will be approved and published that aims to continue a policy of responsibility, but still ease the restrictions that are currently in place, given the situation in 2023”, said the Prime Minister.
Luís Montenegro indicated that the government will approve a “relief of around 20 cubic hectometres in the restriction that is currently in force in all areas of activity”, distributing this amount over “2.65 cubic hectometres of relief in urban consumption, 13.14 relief in consumption for agriculture and 4.17 relief in consumption for tourism”.
In February, the previous Government, led by António Costa, declared an alert situation in the Algarve due to the drought and applied contingency measures that provided for consumption reductions of 25% for agriculture and 15% for the urban sector.
Today, Luís Montenegro announced an easing of these restrictions, although stressing that it is necessary to preserve water as much as possible, which is “a scarce resource” in the region.
“What stands out here is a greater relief in the area of agriculture, because it was also the area that had a greater restriction in relation to the situation in 2023”, he argued, justifying the Government's decision with the rains that have fallen in recent months and improved the general outlook of water reserves in the region.
Montenegro also said that these data represent, “compared to 2023, a decrease in availability of 10% in urban consumption and 13% in consumption for agriculture and tourism”.
“We take this measure aware of the evolution of the hydrological situation, which has been positive in recent months, aware that water is a scarce resource, which must be protected, preserved and managed well, aware that maintaining this policy also implies strengthening investments, in addition to all the monitoring that we did today and that we will also do next August, precisely, taking stock of the measures that we are now going to take”, the government official also stated.
Luís Montenegro warned that the drought situation still persists and there is a need to preserve water resources, considering that the Government's decision was taken from the perspective of “increasing in Portugal, and in the most problematic areas, such as the Algarve region, levels of water efficiencies” and promote “more responsible consumption”.
The Prime Minister also said that it is necessary to “reduce losses in the various uses of water” and resort to wastewater in cases where this source is viable, such as golf, ensuring that the Government's objective is also to promote investment that “can help to this more efficient management” of water.
Source Lusa - Photo by Gov.pt
