The warning siren for an Odeleite Dam discharge returned on Tuesday to play, warning the population of the municipality of Castro Marim for the imminent opening of the floods, found Lusa.
At 10:00, Sirene’s sound was heard throughout the area around the dam and two minutes later the floodgates opened, with the water begins to flow to the Odeleite stream, downstream of the wall, in the face of dozens of onlookers and image reporters.
The dam thus began a temporary controlled discharge, which has not occurred since 2018, according to the spokesman for Águas do Algarve, a company that has in charge of infrastructure management. The dam opening time coincides with the sea bass, which was scheduled for about 10:30.
Among the popular who attended the moment was a Portuguese resident in Seville, but with a house in Vila Real de Santo António, who told Lusa to have stopped seeing a more intense movement than normal next to the dam wall, when he circulated in the Complementary Rook (IC) 27.
“We came from a walk, even was thinking of getting some asparagus, which are usually here, wild, but seeing that they were going to open the floodgates, we decided to see,” said Helena Silva.
Lusa also spoke to Luis Carlos, who said she had moved to the dam on Tuesday morning because she wanted to see the water level, after the rains of the last weeks took the level of the reservoir to exceed 90%, eventually “luck” to coincide with the discharge.
Luísa Rosa, who resides near the village of Odeleite, in the municipality of Castro Marim, district of Faro, was satisfied that the dam was finally full, after several years of drought and uncertainty about water availability, but devalued the moment of opening comports, considering that this “is normal” in a dam.
“But it is always good to open, it is a sign that there is water,” he said.
The spokesman had previously told Lusa that, “only tonight, the dam level [de Odeleite] It rose about two meters due to intense rainfall ”and,“ for the safety reasons of the dams ”, it is necessary to open floodgates.
The Odeleite Dam is the most important of the Algarve Sota (East) and is linked to that of the bunk, located in the same county, south of Odeleite, which should also be the target of a controlled discharge “in the coming days”, according to Teresa Fernandes.
The Odeleite dam has 94% of its capacity and that of the bunk with 89%, according to data from the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) for last Monday.
According to the company spokesman who manages the Algarve Multimmunicated Water Supply and Sanitation System, the Odelouca dam in the Western (West) Algarve, also rose about two meters at night.
On Friday last week, the government announced in Faro that restrictions on water consumption in the Algarve will be relieved equating all sectors, with the imposition of 5% reductions on agriculture, urban sector and tourism.
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