Delta blues

It was another day of sun and clouds, and anther drive around a part of the delta we haven't seen before. The light was lovely, but most of the photos I took were too similar to recent blips, which is the main reason I picked this one. Also, it gives me an excuse to play some Delta Blues.

And speaking of blues ... As you may have noted from my recent blips, the economy and ecology of the Delta del Ebro are completely dependent on water -- both the fresh and salted variety. The delta was formed over centuries, from sediment washed out to sea by the river Ebro (which, I discovered the other day, is the origin of the word Iberia, and comes from a root meaning water, so it's happily tautologous). It's always on the move, but the balance was radically changed when dams were built on the frontier between Aragon and Catalonia in the 1950s and 1960s. The delta is subsiding, and the balance between fresh and salt water is tipping towards salt. If the river continues to be managed as it is now, a quarter of the Delta, where 60,000 people live, will be underwater by 2025.

The Delta is home to 350 species of birds of the 600 that exist in Europe; in winter, there can be 100,000 birds overwintering or passing through. The economy is based on rice cultivation, fishing, and the production of seafood. "If there's no current any more, what nutrients will we have?" asks one mussel producer. "The shellfish won't grow and they'll be poor quality. No-one will want them ... when I hear politicians say that the river water is being 'lost in the sea'... They're only interested in taking the water, they don't care if any of it gets here. They don't listen to us."

Government, farmers, and businesses are always greedy for water in Spain, and the fact that this is a Unesco world heritage site, and the second biggest Mediterranean wetland after the Camargue doesn't seem to bother them unduly. On 28 February this year, Spain's Council of Ministers approved a plan increasing the area irrigated by river water by 50% -- result, less water reaching the sea. And there are also plans to build canals taking water inland into Catalonia, Barcelona, and Valencia. When these are finished, all the water except for the official "ecological" minimum of 3,000 cubic hectometres per year, defined in gthe law, can be used elsewhere.

In Tortosa, the flow is currently 9,000 hm3 per year. The Catalan government's ecologists calculate that to maintain the delta in equilibrium 7,100 hm3 are needed in dry years and 12,500 in wet years. Clearly the government has taken no account of this; it isn't clear where they got their number from. The spokesman for the defence committee says, "If they keep the 3,000 hm3 minimum, the delta will no longer exist ... when the canals are finished and they only have the legal obligation to keep 3,000, they can do what they like with the rest." Another recent law allows private irrigation committees to do what they like with the "excess" water -- including selling it.

Fifteen years ago, the defence committee succeeded in preventing the Aznar government from exporting water from the Ebro to other parts of Spain. This time they have taken part in all the consultations, and not a single one of their propositions has made it into the law. The government claims that none of these plans will affect the ecology of the delta -- but has not provided any scientific data to back this up. "Madrid doesn't see a river -- it sees water." Hence the public demonstrations and the graffiti in Tortosa: Lo Riu es Vida (the river is life).

Source: La Marea

And in my blipfolio: some seagoing mallards!