Some fifty activists have gathered in front of the Torre de Sant Jouan in the Ebro delta to once again denounce the mismanagement that aggravates the regression and subsidence of the delta plain. Added to the usual demands is a criticism of the management of the drought and the use of the resource by agribusiness upstream of the Ebro, an exploitation that condemns the final stretch of the river and the Delta.
Ecologists in Action, PDE, Sedimentos and Agua es Vida call for “responsible management” of the drought, for it to stop being “interested”, for demand to be contained and for talk of “scarcity” to begin. They denounce that while the ecological flow is not met as it passes through Tortosa, new irrigation channels such as the Xerta-Senia are “sanctified”.
Resisting a strong wind, the group of activists has unfurled banners on the Torre de Sant Joan this Friday, one of the symbols of the regression of the Ebro delta. They have approached on foot and with kayaks and have unfurled a large banner at the feet of the structure.
The action coincided with the 40th anniversary of the creation of the Delta del Ebro natural park and also with the Ecologistas en Acción summer school for young people.
From the coastline, there have been slogans to claim more sediments and a management of the basin that stops the environmental and heritage deterioration of the Delta, which also represents the tower, degraded and cracked.
“We want to preserve all the landscape that we have here, to give the territory a future, so that young people have opportunities,” claimed Josep Sabaté, spokesman for the Platform in Defense of the Ebro (PDE). While the water remains upstream, socioeconomic sectors of the Terres de l’Ebre, such as rice or aquaculture, have been endangered by the management of the drought in the basin this year.
The spokesman for the Sediments association, Jordi Parés, recalled that the CHE (Ebro Hydrographic Confederation) is not guaranteeing the ecological flow, as can be seen when the river passes through Tortosa, while it continues to contemplate new irrigation concessions. “The Xerta-Sénia canal is sanctified to be able to bring water for industrial crops to dry land. We do not lack water, there is plenty. We have to know that it must be managed and do things with reasonable criteria,” Parés defended.
The voices of the territory have been joined, this Friday, by entities such as Ecologistas en Acción, also representing the Aragonese section, or Aigua es Vida. Víctor Álvarez, president of the ecological entity in Tarragona and the Ebro, has insisted that this is not the time for pilot tests but for “direct actions” to ensure the ecological flow and the arrival of sediments in the Delta and has blamed the fact that this happens to the “owners of the reservoirs”.
Dante Maschio, spokesman for Agua es Vida, has claimed that the current crisis is not due to drought but “scarcity” of the resource and that we must “stop having sacrifice areas”, such as the Ebro delta.
Alerted by the specter of the transfers, they insist that water management must be reconsidered in the country that has a current system “that is bankrupt.” “We must begin to contain the demand, also end the privatization of water and base ourselves on small solutions for the use of rainwater and gray water,” Maschio defended.
The containment that Aigua es Vida claims should fall, they defend, on the agricultural and livestock model, where they point out that 70% of the water consumption of Catalonia is concentrated. The future must return to a “more dry and traditional” model of agriculture, and “stop doing business with food by simply guaranteeing food security and the right to food, as well as the right to water”. The entity also includes in this review the tourism and urban model and the territorial imbalance generated by metropolitan areas.
The Aragonese activist from Ecologistas en Acción, Marina Gros, added that 92% of the consumption in the Ebro basin goes to agribusiness while “Catalonia suffers from drought”. “We need a moratorium on irrigation, to transform the food production system that is not typical of our ecosystems and areas. We cannot produce rice in the Montnegros desert,” she insisted.
