An environmental inspectorate identified 3,790 public water intakes on the continent that did not comply with water protection certificates, and the environment minister ordered that they be restored to legality within six months.
“3,790 groundwater abstractions have been identified for public supply for human consumption in mainland Portugal, which were carried out in violation of the provisions” of Decree-Law No. 382/99 and the Water Resources Utilization Regime (RURH), according to a report by the Director General of the Inspectorate of Agriculture, Sea, Environment and Territorial Planning (IGAMAOT).
On June 27, the Minister of Environment and Energy, Maria da Graça Carvalho, approved the compliance assessment report on the diploma establishing the protection perimeters for catchment areas intended for public water supply, and ordered the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) to “take all necessary measures within six months” to restore legality.
The Governor also instructed the APA to “submit to the guardianship authority an action plan on sanctions, precautionary measures and the legality of reintegration within a month, as well as a bimonthly report on the actions taken.”
In a report accessed by Lusa, dated January, IGAMAOT added that data from the Water and Wastewater Services Regulatory Authority (ERSAR) dating back to 2021 shows an even higher number of water withdrawals without water rights (TURH) — 4,649 –, “which will affect the production of about 173 million cubic meters [m3] water extracted from underground sources and intended for “unlicensed” human consumption, equivalent to approximately 27% of the total volume collected this year.”
In this sense, he recommended that the APA demonstrate that it has initiated “the restoration of the legality of all abstractions that require them within the period” defined by the holder of the Environment, and “the administrative punishment of management entities that support, in violation of the law, the extraction of groundwater “for the needs of the population” within 60 days of the approval of the report.
The inspection also concluded that the APA and ERSAR data represented “different gaps and gaps, they are not related to each other and are not even comparable, given the lack of uniformity even in the denominations of the same catchment.”
In addition to the delay in analysis, IGAMAOT stressed that “insufficient quality determined the selection of samples” to assess the prohibitions and restrictions resulting from the approval of protection perimeters.
He therefore recommended that the two organisations review their databases, make appropriate corrections and try to establish “interoperability mechanisms” to bring the origin of groundwater into line with the administrative and legal requirements established by law.
The Decree-Law and the RURH regulate the delimitation of the perimeters, establishing restrictions on the use, occupation and transformation of the soil, which may prohibit or condition activities, depending on the characteristics of the aquifers.
Perimeters that must be designated in territorial plans may have a zone of immediate protection adjacent to the catchment area, fenced, clear and designated, where any activity is prohibited, expanded in catchments with a population of more than 500 inhabitants or a runoff of more than 100 m3/day of intermediate, expanded or special protection, with prohibited activities or objects.
The report found that only 103 of the 278 municipalities on the continent had delineated the watersheds defined by the APA in the Municipal Master Plan (MMP), and that 82 municipalities must modify this spatial planning instrument.
Inspectors noted that only 21 of the 103 municipalities with approved protective perimeters included administrative easements in the PDA condition plans, “therefore failing to ensure compliance with the conditions for use, occupation and transformation of the soil” in the rest.
IGAMAOT recommended that the APA, together with the Regional Coordination and Development Commissions (CCDR), transfer to municipalities the responsibility for changing the DPM with the definition of “limited perimeters of protection with approval” in the acts of creation, informing about the steps taken.
At the competition stage, APA said it was trying to overcome “complex legal issues” surrounding the issuance of TURHs for some private groundwater withdrawals, but to inspectors, that doesn’t explain the lack of protective perimeters afforded to those rights when the agency is the National Water Authority and the law allows for expropriation and compensation for easements in the public interest.
ERSAR, for its part, highlighted the publication of Decree-Law 69/2023, which requires georeferencing of captures and sending them to APA along with monitoring data, obliging the agency to map protection perimeters and collaborate with the regulatory authority in exchanging geolocation data.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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