Water News from All over, volume 3455

NYT; Spain's Sunny Coasts Look for Water From the North

"a circle of men in dark robes gathers at the main door to perform an ancient ritual. One holding a halberd calls out that the water tribunal is in session and complaints may be put to the judges.

It looks quaint, but it is serious. Water is the stuff of social conflict here. The 1,000-year-old Tribunal de las Aguas in Valencia, one of the oldest courts in Europe, settles irrigation disputes from the orchards and fields along the nearby Turia River that spills into the Mediterranean.

The judges, farmers themselves, may order a citrus grower to unclog his channel or repair his leaks, or they may fine an artichoke farmer for siphoning off more water than is his due. The traditional Thursday ritual, local historians say, has averted many a battle among families and communities.

It might seem a perfect model for a country in the throes of a sweeping fight over water, but if so, it is being ignored. Instead, with few mediators in sight, chronic water shortages are pitting dry southern Spain against the lush and moist north, and scientists and environmentalists against politicians and developers.

The conflict became an urgent focus of Spain's new prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, on his first day in office in April, when he suspended an elaborate $15 billion national water plan, the first step of which would have involved sending water south by diverting part of the Ebro, Spain's longest river. Mr. Zapatero said the entire concept, which had been criticized as a giveaway to contractors and which various regions complained was inequitable, had to be rethought.

The water war, which has been building for a decade, has raised more fundamental problems about the deteriorating lands along the Mediterranean where the climate is turning measurably hotter and drier. Coastal zones stretching all the way from Portugal and Spain to Italy and Greece, have been transformed by huge tourist resorts, apartment complexes and golf courses demanding more and more water in a region that is already chronically short."

Read more, here

And unfortunately, water is obviously going to become more scarce (until the polar ice caps melt, I suppose). So, that's why I'm staying by Lake Michigan, part of the largest fresh water reservoirs on Earth. There aren't even water meters in Chicago.



[Posted with ecto]