The dam supplying Baixo Alentejo has not been filled for ten years.

The Monte da Rocha dam in Orica provides water for the entire Baixo Alentejo, but it is 9% and has not been filled for ten years, although Manuel Cayetano believes that it still has a lot of water for several years.

The Portuguese Environmental Protection Agency (APA) controls 75 reservoirs and according to data updated last week, most of them (40) have a capacity between 81 and 100%. However, in the panorama of water retention, three stand out with a water content of less than 20%: Bravura (12%), in the municipality of Lagos, Campillas (10%), in Santiago do Casem and the worst, Monte da Rocha. at 09% power.

Built for the supply of people and irrigation, Monte da Rocha did not even provide water for irrigation this year due to the small supply of water intended only to serve the municipalities of Castro Verde, Urique, Almodovar, Mertola and Odemira, which in total have more than 50 thousand inhabitants.

In February of this year, a tender was announced for the delivery of water from Alqueva to Monte da Rocha, scheduled for 2025. But Manuel Cayetano does not believe in this.

Restrained Manuel Cayetano listens more than he talks. He has owned Restaurante a Rocha, right in front of the dam, for 42 years. And, using a good memory, he says: “The last time I saw him full was in 2013, since then he has been going downhill.

What was once a large reservoir of water brought by the Sado River for irrigation and for the inhabitants of the five municipalities now has small lakes in the center, away from the campsite, which once included sea sports on the “menu” and far from the village of Chada Velha, which “remained an island when the dam filled up,” recalls, for its part, Adiliou Guerreiro, a farmer and worker in Câmara de Orica.

It seems that it is difficult for these scattered small lakes to supply five municipalities with water, but Manuel Cayetano, who has been watching the dam for many years, ensures that there will be no shortage of water in the coming years. And Ilidio Martins, president of the Association of Regents and Beneficiaries of Campillas and Alto Sado (Alto Sado is another name for Monte da Rocha), on the basis of technical data, guarantees the same.

The association is the managing organization of the dam and, according to its president, there will be no shortage of water.

“We have a reserve for next year, but we hope that this reserve will increase due to rain and that there will be precipitation next winter, because it would be very bad if this did not happen,” he tells Luce.

At the moment, Monte da Rocha doesn’t even look like a dam. Grass grows and dries on the walls and in the bed, and where there should have been water, reeds, cistus, heather, brambles grow, and at least one small pine tree is already there, a sign that the water has not yet covered the earth for a long time.

There are watermarks on the margins, some with dates that Manuel Cayetano knows by heart.

Sitting on the terrace of a restaurant, from the heat left in the afternoon and from the fact that the mirror of the water no longer softens, Manuel Cayetano says that there are still people who go there to fish, but now no one takes boats. “Now it’s delicious.”

Manuel Cayetano talks about times when he lived elsewhere, in Lisbon, but most of all he remembers the last 42 years, when the dam was a tourist center, when the main road in the Algarve passed by the doors, the restaurant was always full, cars and buses parked around. “At that time we were open day and night, we couldn’t even close.”

On a hot afternoon, only Adiliou Guerreiro came in. He also walked around Lisbon, but also returned to where he was born, in Monte da Rocha, to raise sheep and live a much happier life, away from the bustle of the city.

The only thing he regrets is that the water from the dam receded like that and took the life of past years with it. “Unfortunately, we have this disaster of nature,” he says.

Nature is unlucky for some of the 450 members of the Associação de Regantes who have no water for irrigation. “We are one of the few associations in the country that cannot irrigate due to lack of water,” laments Ilidio Martins.

The association covers the municipalities of Santiago do Casem, Odemira and Orique, but there is practically no water for irrigation in Orique, as in part of Santiago.

The association manages five reservoirs, two of the three “unprofitable”, Campillas and Monte da Rocha. The last time Campillas was filled was in 2013, and this year the water is only for emergency watering and watering for animals. And decisions for Campillas still depend on heaven.

Monte da Rocha is different though. Ilidio Martins says that he only has 9.5 million cubic meters of water, which this year was not even open for agriculture, but that the open tender for the works is ongoing and that within two years the water from Alqueva can get there. . And compose an “unfortunate nature.”