According to Postal, the project to build a desalination plant in the municipality of Albufeira will be under public consultation until December 19, the company Águas do Algarve announced.

‘The EIA (Environmental Impact Study) has come to a decision and is pleased to inform you that public consultation is now available, with a deadline from 06/11/23 until 19/12/23, hoping to see participation’, reads the note from the regional company that is a part of the Águas de Portugal Group.

‘This is an implementation of an alternative capable of guaranteeing the resilience of public supply to the population of the Algarve region, even in periods of prolonged drought, with the goal to assure water availability for present and future consumption’, states the company.

In the note, Águas do Algarve highlights that the future unit that will remove salt from the sea will also allow the ‘increase of resilience of the public water supply system’ for the entire region, taking into account the verified seasonal consumption and the fact that the water from the desalination process goes to feed the distribution system.

The measures plan to strengthen the Algarve’s water supply system, according to the company that distributes water in the south of the country, they also ‘guarantee an increase in average annual water availability of 17 million cubic meters in 2023, totalling an accumulated annual increase of around 69 million cubic meters in 2026 across the region.

At the beginning of June, the Government announced that it would propose the construction of a desalination plant in the municipality of Albufeira and that it intended to open construction by the end of the year.

‘As claimed by the studies carried out by the Águas de Portugal, that will be submitted for environmental impact assessment, the place that they propose the installation of the desalination plant is the municipality of Albufeira’, said Duarte Cordeiro, the Minister of Environment and Climate Action, during a debate on water, in Lisbon.

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