The president of the Comunidad de Regantes del Margen Derecho del Gaià de Bràfim (Alt Camp), Francesc Xavier Saperas, testified this Wednesday in the trial court number 3 of Valls to defend himself against the complaint lodged by the Catalan Water Agency (ACA).
The regantse are accused of leaving the Gaià without ecological flow. The irrigators assured that two days before the complaint it rained 20 liters, but that the channel dried quickly due to the drought.
“The entrance to the river is a manhole and we do it manually. How do you measure the ecological flow and the liters that enter the irrigation? We have no means to control it,” said Saperas.
The Unió de Pagesos (UP) union has attacked the ACA and considered that it cannot “sanction an ecological flow that is not real.”
A dozen people gathered this morning in front of the Valls courts and blocked the Pla highway with their vehicles to show their support for the president of the Bràfim irrigation community following his summons.
Unió de Pagesos had called for a tractor rally as a protest action, which has been overshadowed by the mobilization of the 6F platform with the farmers’ march towards Barcelona.
However, the concentrates have maintained the cut for approximately an hour, the time that Saperas has been declaring.
The community of the Right Bank of Gaià de Bràfim is made up of 36 irrigators, of which only six use the water for irrigation.
Its president has stated that he does not understand the reasons why the ACA has denounced them and has indicated that it is a “very great harm” to them because they are a small community. “Two days before the Rural Agents give us the report, 20 liters fall, a little water drops and they tell us to take too much of the river, when two more days later, the river was dry,” said Saperas.
The person in charge of the irrigators has explained that they collect the water manually and that they do not have the resources to control the quantity. Also that the water that they do not use returns to the river. Now, after receiving the request from the ACA that asks them to control the flows, he says that they are going to study what the best measures are to avoid new complaints. “We will get advice, I suppose we will have to put counters and measure it, this will cost us money,” he stressed.
