Some Spanish Reservoirs At 20% As Political Bickering Intensifies

[hatrack]

"SPAIN's driest winter and spring for more than 60 years have left reservoirs in some parts of the country at 20 per cent of their normal capacity and crops across this European agricultural powerhouse nation wilting. While the swimming pools remain full and the golf courses lush in those areas popular with holidaymakers, further inland many rivers have lost nearly a third of their volume. "Right now we're at a critical point," said Juan Manuel Pascual Torres, 40, a melon and pepper farmer from the southeastern town of Elche. "If we don't get substantial rainfall soon we're in real trouble."

Farmers in his region have been told they can irrigate for a maximum of eight minutes a day. Mr Torres does not rule out abandoning his crops to seek work in a shoe factory as he did during the 1990s when another prolonged drought hit Spain. Losses nationally so far are estimated at some £1 billion in failed crops and fodder for grazing animals. The agricultural ministry predicts grain production will be slashed 25 per cent nationally this year, with some southern and eastern regions suffering shortfalls of up to 50 per cent. Orange groves and vineyards, still reeling from last winter's frosts, promise a meagre harvest in the autumn.

EDIT

A bitter argument is raging over how the drought should be handled. One side, led by the conservative opposition Popular Party, seeks the revival of a multi-billion-pound transfer programme that called for the water-richer northern areas to supply the centre and south. The governing Socialists, backed by most other parties and ecological groups, scrapped that plan as soon as they got into government last spring. They insist on a total rethink of water resources, based on desalination plants and water banks, with an emphasis on less squandering and more protection of water-bearing rock and forests. "We have to change our idea of water, because there isn't enough water for everything," said Jaime Pallop, the environment ministry's water department director.

Less than a decade ago, Spain was in the throes of a five-year drought that hit harvests, forced restrictions in towns and triggered a bitter inter-regional and cross-party conflict over water rights. Ten years on, little seems to have changed except the party in government. "We know droughts are cyclical. We should be used to this," said Mr Torres, "but we never seem to learn."

EDIT

http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=651242005

[Wilber_Stool]

1. "but we never seem to learn."............n/t

[NNadir]

2. We don't know if droughts are cyclical anymore.

They may not be so. We are entering a new climatic era.