Olhão’s council-owned water services company was granted €500,000 in 2013 to sort out the city’s long standing and increasing problem with sewage flowing uninterrupted into the Ria Formosa.
News today that Ambiolhão has spent just over half of this amount in two years will not impress locals and businesses that are dependent on tourists and their repeat visits.
The untreated sewage that flows into the protected Ria Formosa lagoon area is spotted by tourists as they walk towards the ferries that serve the islands, many questioning how in the 21st century can a European city allow sewage outlets to discharge into a busy quayside area?
The problem is not a new one and a lack of past rigidity in town planning and building regulations has allowed builders over the years, especially in the 1980s, to connect domestic foul water discharge pipes to the rainwater drainage pipes, with the inevitable result that the two mix and flow uninterrupted into the supposedly pristine water of the Ria Formosa.
There is an increasing pressure on the sewage system and the council wants to make Olhão a tourist destination, so attention is long overdue to the city's underground services. Currently only a percentage of the city’s sewage is getting as far as the two local treatment plants.
One treatment facility to the west of the city is to be rebuilt, but this is hardly news as the plan has been on the cards for years.
The delay now is down to regional water service company Aguas do Algarve which is playing a political game of cat and mouse with those councils and council water companies which owe money.
The new sewage treatment plant will not stop the discharge into the Ria Formosa in Olhão which, despite some work being done on underground connections, is not close to halting the flow of sewage.
The council said today that the sewage is, "an identified problem, difficult to resolve, and it has represented a source of pollution in the Ria Formosa."
AmbiOlhão was granted the €500,000 to sort out the problem and to “invest in identifying improper connections and subsequent correction the detected irregularities.”
Its work to date cannot be said to have been carried out with any degree of urgency, the council says the company ‘has been thorough” with 3.2 kilometres of pipe in seven sections of the city subject to CCTV and visual inspections.
Some of the underground systems surveyed displayed no irregularities but in general the pipework under Olhão is a mess with hundreds of household sewage pipes connected to rainwater discharge pipes.
The council and the wholly owned water company admits to moving slowly but their claims to have completed half the necessary work with a spend of €280,000 are not credible - the size of the problem is unquantifiable.
"Having identified the problems and the respective solution, the correction work has been done gradually and more than half has already been finalised, leading to an investment of around €280,000," says an optimistic council.
The well-informed local website Olhão Livre expressed a different opinion and noted that the work completed so far is a start to a wider problem as there remains sewage discharges at multiple points into the Ria Formosa causing pollution which has halted the safe harvesting of shellfish which many locals depend on for their income.
€500,000 was never going to stop the uninterrupted flow of turds and condoms into the harbour and the money must be found rapidly to address this most unedifying of local problems.
A start has been made and a methodology established so resources must be allocated to stop the stink. As for the mayor's legacy, a clean Ria Formosa is better than many of those being considered.
