Two years have passed since attempting a seemingly impossible job. THE final connection of the La Colada reservoir Yesterday, with the Sierra Boyera dam, a new chapter opened in the administrative loop and the political conflict in which it was created. … since the Junta de Andalucía launched a call for tenders in November 2023. The Andalusian administration presented the modified project to try to unblock the refusal of the Hydrographic Confederation of Guadiana (CHG) to this action. His future remains up in the air. From now on, the basin organization must decide, once again, whether it definitively authorizes the work or not a second time.
The work to connect the El Viso reservoir with the Belmez reservoir is an obligatory task that aims to prevent 72,000 residents of 24 municipalities (not all) of the Guadiato and Los Pedroches regions from being left without drinking water for another year, as happened in 2023 at the height of the drought.
The disagreement between Junta of Andalusia and the Foral Delegation of Córdoba with the Spanish Government and the Guadiana Confederation is a problem that has its roots since the Andalusian Executive declared these works linking La Colada and Sierra Boyera of interest to the Community in June 2020. However, the conflict has worsened in the last two years, since the Authority launched a call for tenders for these works in November 2023.
The battle
The political and administrative battle is in any case based on a previous problem. The Andalusian government, then still in the hands of the PSOE, decided not to complete the linking works between La Colada and Sierra Boyera in 2009. The El Viso dam had been inaugurated in 2006 in response to the drought of 1995. The connection of the reservoirs was 90 percent complete, but 10 percent remained unfinished.
The drought would leave 72,000 inhabitants of the region without water (neither drinking nor supplies). North of Cordoba before the drainage of the Sierra Boyera. Faced with this situation, the Spanish government has decided to complete the connection with temporary and emergency works. The performance lasted approximately four months and cost 4.3 million euros. It served to guarantee supply, but not quality. Additionally, its temporary nature meant it had to be pumped with diesel power. There isn’t even electricity.
To make it “robust and definitive” with several fundamental improvements, the Commission, which had declared this action of community interest in 2020 after the arrival of the PP to the Regional Government, launched the call for tenders for the works in November 2023. After a process in which almost twenty companies presented themselves, the contract was awarded on October 23, 2024 to Jicar. These 14 months were torture for the neighbors who witnessed the public struggle between the institutions.
As soon as the government of Juanma Moreno granted the work that the PSOE had stopped without finishing in the Council in 2009, the problems began. The CHG, which had not opposed this intervention in the public hearing process, raised its hand to warn that it must authorize the exploitation of the water that the Provincial Council requested as an intervention by the Régie. You could see the problems coming. And they arrived. The president of the CHG, Samuel Moraleda, announced in an interview on ABC that he had 18 months to authorize it. It seemed like an obstacle to a job that seemed imminent.
The process came to a complete halt when the basin body announced its decision. THE CHG He granted the exploitation of water, but refused the work of the Council. Of that, the only thing he considered necessary (and allowed) was power lines. He did it on April 15 of this year, in the middle of Holy Week. Among their arguments were that they could not allow the extraction rate of 600 liters per second requested (they only authorized 400), the environmental impact – although the project had environmental authorization from the Office, competent in the matter – with the duplication of pipelines and the economic inefficiency of spending 9.3 million on a problem which, in the eyes of the government, was already solved with its temporary pumping.
The Régie and the Provincial Council presented their allegations on May 2 to save this mess. The response to this rectification process was again negative in a proposed resolution in June. The CHG again notified the same in July. To reinforce the negative, President Moraleda He gave a press conference in Cordoba on July 16. He warned that the Commission and the Provincial Council would respond before July 21, otherwise the process would end.
In this context, the Provincial Council chose to request the suspension of this procedure, while making a modification to respond to Guadiana’s requests. The Confederation gave it six months to present it and then rule. In September, technicians from the CHG and the Council met to agree on the terms of the modification. The Council presented yesterday, December 10, this new project which will be transmitted to the Provincial Council. From now on, the decision is again in the hands of the basin organization. Uncertainty remains latent, because the solutions are similar.
ABC contacted CHG yesterday to find out the procedures and timelines the process will now follow. The response was that, at the moment, he had not received a transfer of the modified project. In essence, the Provincial Council had already warned in September of this year that if the CHG did not authorize this modification, it would abandon the works and begin to demand the connection of Puente Nuevo with Sierra Boyera.
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