Spain promises Brussels that it will paralyze the expansion of irrigation that "endangers" Doñana
The Government has promised the European Commission that it will paralyze the expansion of irrigation in Doñana promoted by PP, Vox and Ciudadanos because "it endangers the integrity of the ecosystem", according to the response report from the Ministry of Ecological Transition to which elDiario has accessed. is.
Spain has responded this week to the letter of "deep concern" and "bewilderment" that Brussels sent in February before the proposed law to amnesty some 1,500 hectares of irrigated farms without permission in the Doñana area.
The warning from Brussels implied a possible complaint before the community justice that already condemned Spain in June 2021 for not protecting Doñana from plundering of the water that has suffered. What the report on which the official response has been based on explains is that this regularization would "undermine" the measures that have been planned to stop the deterioration of the aquifers from which the park lives and that were designed "taking into account the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union".
The Ecological Transition analysis affirms that, in the event that this regulation is finally approved, "Spain will promote an appeal of unconstitutionality for the immediate suspension of its application." If this type of appeal is presented by the President of the Government and requests the suspension of the rule, it is enough for the Court to admit it for processing for that rule to be paralyzed.
In addition, the measures to which the Executive refers were communicated to the Commission's General Directorate for the Environment in September 2021, three months before the PP, Ciudadanos and Vox presented two bills to suddenly transform those farms. without authorization in legal exploitations. Two initiatives (identical in content) were registered so that Ciudadanos did not appear together with Vox in the signatures, but they are processed in a single process.
The Commission has just reiterated its position on the project so that there are more farms around the marshes. The head of the Environmental Implementation and Compliance unit, Ion Codescu, told a delegation from the organizations WWF, Ecologists in Action and SEO Birdlife, accompanied by Adelante Andalucía and MEP Miguel Urban, a few days ago that "if the proposal is not withdrawn law and comply with the sentence, applying measures to reduce the impact on the Doñana aquifer, Spain will be fined".
The ministry reiterates to the Community Executive that water allocations for irrigation in the area have environmental conservation in Doñana as a priority and the new hydrological plan "accentuates protection measures."
That is why it does not contemplate the possibility of legalizing the use of more water volume to satisfy the farms that are currently irrigated illegally: "The Spanish water legislation and the Guadalquivir hydrological plan do not give any option to increase water extraction underground for irrigation in the surroundings", despite the fact that those 1,500 hectares of farms were finally declared regular and with irrigation allowed.
In the explanations it is clarified that the water that will reach Huelva County through the transfer from the Tinto-Odiel-Piedras basin is subject to reducing the current legal underground extractions. That is to say, that volume of up to 16.99 cubic hectometers has to alleviate the pumping that sucks from the subsoil to irrigate farms with water rights, not feed farms that have irrigated from the aquifers without permission, the report abounds. Three of the five groundwater masses under Doñana are declared overexploited.
The bill that is now being processed in the Andalusian Parliament has emerged almost at the end of the regional legislature, despite the fact that President Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla had opted for similar plans when he was a candidate, yes, always before the Court European will sentence against Spain. The Andalusian Courts admitted for processing the texts on February 9 with the abstention of the PSOE. The Andalusian electoral calendar marks regional elections – at the latest – at the end of this year.
The legal proposal entered the parliamentary register in January, shortly after the extreme right of Vox presented a text that asked the Government of Moreno Bonilla to amnesty the farms. A text that was almost a carbon copy of another similar initiative presented by the chief executive when he was still in opposition.
