The Ebro delta lives a summer like no one can remember. Not the older ones. There are no precedents. There is less fresh water than ever going down the two large irrigation canals, on both banks. The fresh water manna in an area threatened by salinity, due to its proximity to the sea, has been irrigating the kilometer-long network of pipes since spring. Insufficient nutrition for the rice fields, which is vital for the lagoons and the entire delta ecosystem.
“We had never experienced something like this, we are having a very bad time. Climate change is here to stay”, laments Albert Pons, experienced rice farmer, head of the sector at Unió de Pagesos (UP).
The drought caused the Ebro Hydrographic Confederation (CHE) to decide in spring, by surprise, to reduce irrigation water in the Delta by half. A catastrophe that in the middle of August, in the final stretch of the rice campaign, is already beginning to show its disastrous consequences: in the rice fields, with fields where mortality is already visible, and in the fragile environmental balance on which supports the wetland.
It is still impossible for the rice sector to venture figures or percentages on the reduction of the harvest, which will be uneven. The plant is now facing the final stretch of its growth cycle, a critical moment that is more uncertain than ever, but it is known that the damage will be significant.
“The plant is dying, there are fields where the ears are empty,” warns Rafel Verdiell, a rice farmer who is responsible for UP’s vegetable sector. It is not strange when walking through the Delta this summer to see rice farmers like Verdiell measuring the salinity of the water with an electronic device. In some fields, those closest to the sea, such as La Ràpita or Poble Nou del Delta (Montsià), salinity is five times the maximum viable limit for rice. Irrigation is intermittent, agonizing, with the overheated water being reused. Not a drop is lost. “The situation is distressing,” says another rice farmer.
The right hemidelta, with 300 hectares considered lost, is the most affected. On the left, the forecasts are less dire, although the scarcity of fresh water has made it necessary to pump the water from the drains back to the canals and this favors the spread of the dreaded apple snail, an invasive species that had been kept at bay in recent years. 15 years. “We have put the wolf with the sheep,” they lament.
