Spain Set to Invest Heavily in Irrigation Upgrade
Date: 10-Mar-06
Country: SPAIN
Spain's Agriculture Ministry is already coordinating small irrigation improvements around the country, but the new measures would go much further.
Europa Press said the investment was included in the text of a decree law that could be passed as early as Friday and whose aim is to save water to offset the damage caused by drought.
The new plan runs to 2007 and aims to save 1,162 cubic hectometres of water a year. A cubic hectometre is the amount of water that fits in a cube with 100 metre (yard) sides.
That annual saving is the equivalent of around 4 percent of the water in Spain's reservoirs now, after the driest year since records began.
Not only was the year to the end of September 2005 the driest in at least 50 years, but the amount of rain in the first four months of the new hydrological year show that drought is continuing across most of the country, the report said, quoting the text of the decree law.
The new law will include ways to make use of desalinated water and recycled waste water from urban areas.
