Castro Marim council has decided that people do not want to move to villages that do not have a mains water supply.
With this in mind, as much as serving those ratepayers that never have been on the mains, the council has asked for European Community financial help to lay pipes to 28 of its mains-free villages.
The Castro Marim water project funding is under the curiously named PO-SEUR programme.
The acronym stands for Programa Operacional Sustentabilidade e Eficiência no Uso de Recursos (Operational Programme for Sustainability and Efficiency in the Use of Resources) and seems purpose built to offer financial help to supply water to villages.
The lack of mains water in Castro Marim's villages has been blamed for decades on ‘lack of money’ but with a project cost of €3.9 million, the project will hardly cripple council finances, especially with EU help.
The aim simply is "to allow the water supply in quantity and quality to people in rural parishes currently un-served," according to the council led by Francisco Amaral.
"With this funding we can serve about 50% of those people still without a mains water supply," claims the council.
The work will feed from the current Multi-municipal Algarve Water Supply System and is really a matter of digging miles of trenches and laying pipes.
It would have been sensible at the same time to sort out the various waste treatment systems that serve these villages but this is too much trouble as there is no EU funding available, hence the old council excuse comes back into play ‘not enough money.’
The council is delighted that someone else is paying for work that it should have done years ago, talking now of “the development and improvement of living conditions for the resident population and the raising of standards in the interior of the municipality of Castro Marim to add to the appeal to new residents and to help the local economy through increased tourism."
Councils supplying water only to high margin urban customers fail in their social duty as State-sponsored monopolies - Castro Marim long has been an offender in this regard.
Yes still many of the Algarve's water companies fail to serve despite zero competition. One such service failure can be seen at Infralobo in Loulé which is abusing its power by denying certain customers water due to their non-payment of an illegal ‘per bedroom’ tax.
Cutting off water to customers while the judges slowly kick the legal ball around the court system is not acceptable behaviour by Infralobo yet remains unchallenged by any higher authority with the toothless regulator simply being ignored.
For rural areas, once a remote village has been linked to a mains water supply, the water company has customers for life.
With the bonus of EU grants available to pay for much or all the work in the Castro Marim area, there is nothing now stopping the supply of mains water reaching 100% of those living in the Algarve.
With this type of EU grant should come conditions, one of which for Castro Marim could have been the effective treatment of sewage by linking villages to the Algarve’s main treatment plants or by improving stand-alone facilities.
