Date Published: 20/12/2019
ARCHIVED - Battle is joined as the Murcia government fights for irrigation water
ARCHIVED ARTICLE 
Irrigation farmers threaten protests as anger grows over the refusal to send water via the Tajo-Segura canal
Following the Ministry of Ecological Transition’s decision earlier in the week not to transfer water for irrigation to the Segura basin (which includes the Region of Murcia) from the Tajo in central Spain during December, it appears that battle is being joined in the latest “water war” as farmers fight for the “extra” water on which they have come to rely during the boom in crop farming in south-eastern Spain over the last 40 years.
Irrigation farmers are committed to protests against the Ministry’s policy not only in Murcia but also in the provinces of Almería and Alicante, parts of which lie within the Segura basin, and Lucas Jiménez of the Scrats union, which represents the agriculturalists who depend on water transfers, reports that he is even more preoccupied over the future of the sector after a meeting on Thursday with Francisco Jiménez, the national government delegate to the Region of Murcia.
One of the reasons that the farmers feel particularly aggrieved by the cutting off of the supply from the Tajo-Segura canal is that the justification offered by the Ministry is that irrigation farming is held to be the principal contributing factor in the deterioration of the marine environment of the Mar Menor. In one sense, it has to be said, this is encouraging for those who appreciate the need to protect and regenerate the lagoon: reading between the lines, the Ministry is saying to the CHS water infrastructures administration body and the farmers that if they are unable to use the water in an environmentally harmless way, they will not be allowed to use it at all.
(Click here for an explanation of how Murcia came to be dependent on water from the Tajo-Segura canal and created a situation of inherent structural deficit in its water supply)

But on the other hand, irrigation farming in the Segura basin is not limited to the Campo de Cartagena, from where runoff water containing nutrients has a negative effect on the Mar Menor. The Segura basin occupies an area of over 19,000 square kilometres – the Region of Murcia accounts for under 60 per cent of it – and even if the measures against farmers in the Campo de Cartagena can be justified by the condition of the Mar Menor the anger of those in other areas is not hard to understand.
However, to single out agriculturalists in the Campo de Cartagena would be contrary to the law which governs the water transfers from the Tajo, so the government’s hands are tied.
Meanwhile, politicians of almost all parties in the Region of Murcia, including members of the PSOE which currently forms the acting national government, have spoken out against the cutting of irrigation water transfers. Diego Conesa, the leader of the regional PSOE group, has described the move as unacceptable, while the PP-led regional government is to send an open letter to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez expressing their concern over the future of the Tajo-Segura canal and the agriculture sector.
At the same time, the government will appeal against the latest decision as soon as it is published in the official State bulletin, and has offered its full support to Scrats as it fights what is being seen as a direct attack not only on the farmers but also on the interests of the Region of Murcia.
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