The other side of bad weather: southern Portugal has water until 2029. “We are rested”

The dams are full, literally. “I have no doubt that, regarding the amount of water, we are completely rested”.

O on the of the country has water stored that enough for “two to three years”with all dams “literally full”, said the president of the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA), admitting that national records could be broken in reservoirs.

“I have no doubt that in two to three years, from the point of view of water quantity, we will be completely rested. We have the dams literally full“, José Pimenta Machado told Lusa, estimating that at the end of February Portugal will break the record for water stored in the country.

“The only reason we are not at 100% is because we are releasing water”he noted.

According to the APA’s weekly reservoir bulletin, last Monday mainland Portugal had 12,610 cubic hectometers of water stored, 95% of total capacity. THE reservoir with less waterthe Arade (river that flows into Portimão), was 74%.

Speaking to the Lusa agency Pimenta Machado highlighted that the country went through a “truly exceptional situation”, with persistent rains that affected “from Bragança to Faro” following the storms” that affected the country in recent weeks.

“It was all over the country. I don’t remember all the river basins being full“, he stated.

The person in charge recalled that the reality in the south is very different da do norte but, in the succession of storms, the area that generally has less water, the south, was equally affected.

Pimenta Machado pointed out a case that clearly shows this reality, the Monte da Rocha dam, which “all Portuguese know because it has no water”and that this week he was carrying out surface discharges because he was “completely full”.

At the dam Monte da RochaOurique municipality, in Alentejo, this century had only filled up in 2011, but the following years were dry. Comparing data from February in 2018, it was at 8% of capacity and in 2021 it reached 29.4%. Last year it was 14.5% and in 2024 it was 12.1%.

“The same thing as Campilhas, same thing as the Algarve reservoirs”, said the president of APA, remembering that in 2024 the dams in the Algarve would have water for five months.

The data indicates that Campilhas, Santiago do Cacém, Alentejo, did not exceed 40% in the last decade (in 2017) and in February 2022, in the middle of winter, it was at 4%.

Na de Saint Clareon the Mira River, Odemira, has fluctuated in recent years between 66% and 33%, “and at the moment it is full”.

Already Bravura, municipality of Lagos, in the last 10 years the maximum it reached in February was 34.1% in 2022. Two years ago it was 12.5%. In Castro Marim, another dam, Odeleite, has never filled in the last decade.

This year all reservoirs are fullwhich demonstrates “the character exceptional” that the country went through, today having a calmer situation and with the rivers returning to their beds.

“Difficult”

Pimenta Machado admitted that this period “was not easy”.

“From a professional point of view I have never experienced such a difficult time”assumed.

Even in the Algarve, it took a good management of the Arade and Funcho dams, in the Arade basin. “Since 2018, I remember, Arade didn’t have water. Because Arade had to download several days in a row“, he noted.

The Chança river, a tributary of the Guadiana, on the Spanish side, also reached values ​​of 1,100 cubic meters per second.

“I don’t remember ever having discharged into the Guadiana, which had flows at the mouth of the order of 6,000 cubic meters per second”, he pointed out.

Pimenta Machado recalled that the storms entered the Atlantic, affected Portugal and then went to Spain, and From the Spanish basins the water returned to Portugal, a difficulty to which was added the “additional difficulty” of snow (when it turned into water it flowed into the rivers), especially the Mondego and Zêzere.

“We always have a hard time understanding what melting ice means for the river flow.“, he said, remembering that last summer’s fires also had an influence, as in the Açor mountain range, where weakened vegetation and soils that did not retain water worsened the situation.