Promoter of the National Hydrological Plan (PHN) approved in 2001 and still in force, the PP wants to recover the initiative in water management in a context of severe drought like the current one and, two decades later and from the opposition, it has led to the Congress a bill to promote a National Water Pact and a “coherent water policy”, which does not rule out transfers and which will be debated in an upcoming plenary session.
Climate change has shown how unrealistic the old slogan of “water for all” was, because it is not an inexhaustible resource that can be extracted from one place to take it to another and convert austere dry land into orchards overnight. of irrigation. But the PP understands that, faced with the formidable environmental challenge of this 21st century, this “source of environmental and economic wealth” must be “shared.”
And this can be done, maintains the proposal registered on March 11 by the popular group in the Lower House, without undermining solidarity and territorial cohesion, making the sustainability and economic development of the different peninsular regions, so different, compatible. geographically.
But for this to be possible, “a great political agreement for the future of water” is necessary, admits the PP, which recalls in the explanatory statement of its proposal that the PSOE agreed with the roadmap that in March 2017. was presented to the National Water Council, which contained measures to “ensure the balance and protection of the water environment” and, at the same time, guarantee “attention to the demands of the entire territory”, although later, already in the Government , the president, Pedro Sánchez, and his Minister of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, “disdained the previous work.”
This being the case, and in the midst of an unprecedented drought and unforeseeable consequences in the Mediterranean basin, where the supply of drinking water is greatly compromised due to the decreasing level of the swamps and the lack of rain, the opposition reaches out to the Executive. to address this crisis “from dialogue and consensus” and demands to resume the negotiation in order to agree, with the participation of the autonomous communities and the sectors involved, those investments in sanitation, regulation and use that allow improving the management of the water resources, also those intended for irrigation.
“It has taken too long waiting for nature to solve the inefficiencies of the hydraulic policy,” laments the PP, which, consequently, demands that the Government follow the planning already planned since the Mariano Rajoy era and prioritize the achievement of a “national consensus”.
As a premise, for the PP it is necessary to “reopen” the negotiation process with the autonomous governments – not in vain twelve of the 17 are in their power, which represents a notable counterweight – and with the irrigators and put on the table “alternatives”. both conventional and unconventional”, which is the formula used to include solutions that may affect more than one basin and, therefore, require dusting off the PHN to suggest a transfer.
On the other hand, the PP proposal proposes creating a Strategic Water Network, that is, developing infrastructure and information systems aimed at optimizing the management of water resources. And it urges the Government to provide sufficient funds in the general budgets to carry out the necessary actions.
