The projects for two new dams that the Alqueva Development and Infrastructure Company (EDIA) intends to build in the Beja and Mértola areas are taking the first steps, the company’s president revealed today.
In statements to the Lusa agency, the president of EDIA, José Pedro Salema, indicated that the company intends to build the dams “downstream of the Alqueva-Pedrógão system”, on the Terges and Cobres streams and the Carreiras stream, tributaries of the Guadiana River.
The construction of these two dams aims to “increase the resilience of the Alqueva system”, with the projects included in the national strategy “Water that Unites”, he stressed.
EDIA launched the public tender for the execution project and Environmental Impact Study (EIA) of the Terges and Cobres Dam, in the municipalities of Beja and Mértola, with an investment of 990 thousand euros, to which Value Added Tax (VAT) is added.
According to the procedure, whose notice was published today in the Diário da República (DR), the submission of proposals runs until July 20 and the contract execution period is 18 months.
As for the execution project and EIA of the Carreiras Dam, in the municipality of Mértola, “probably another month and that tender will also be published in the DR”, the company president revealed.
Alluding to the Terges and Cobres Dam project, the official noted that “the preliminary study was carried out internally by EDIA” and, now, it is necessary to define the best of the “three pre-studied locations” for the construction of the infrastructure.
“We have to hand over [this task] to a team of designers, who will study in detail where it makes more economic, ecological and hydraulic sense to build the wall that will dam the waters and create the new reservoir,” he stressed.
Normally, he said, an execution project and EIA for a dam takes “about two years of work”, while the issuance of the Environmental Impact Declaration (DIA) “is another six months.”
“I would say that we are about two and a half, three years, away from being able to have work on these dams,” he estimated.
Questioned about the planned investment for each of the dams, the EDIA president stressed that it will now be the designers who will “make the budget estimate”, but admitted that it will be “a figure in the order of tens of millions of euros.”
In statements to Lusa, José Pedro Salema explained that the streams “have water at some moments of winter, but, in summer, they are zero”, hence the construction of these dams will be important to ensure the ecological flow of the Guadiana River.
“If we have these dams, which are downstream of Pedrógão, but upstream of Pomarão, we can use the water stored there during flood moments to ensure ecological flows in the summer or when there is less water, releasing the pressure from Alqueva.”
In other words, he added, the water retention in the dams allows for “the regularized flow during more months” in the Guadiana and the water that is released is the one that “is not withdrawn from Alqueva”, giving “more resilience to the system”.
