The Government of the Region of Murcia has appealed to the Supreme Court the Tagus hydrological plan, approved by the Council of Ministers on January 24, due to the cut that it will entail in the shipments of water from the Tagus-Segura transfer.

The Murcian president, Fernando López Miras, stated that same day his intention to take the matter to court, as also announced by his counterparts in Andalusia and the Valencian Community.

This Monday, when the official term to do so ended, the popular leader has confirmed that the appeal has been formalized, which includes a request for precautionary measures to suspend "immediately" the application of the ecological flow established by the basin plan.

According to the central government document,

On March 23, when the Murcian Government Council approved the presentation of the appeal, its spokesman, Marcos Ortuño, explained that they would focus their allegations on the idea that state regulations and ecological flows are based on ideological and non-scientific criteria, and also that the project was approved "unilaterally" by the Council of Ministers, modifying the previous agreement that had been adopted by the National Water Commission.

Another of the arguments, according to him, is that of the incompatibility between the Tagus basin plan and that of Segura.

For López Miras, the cut in the transfer stems from a "political, ideological and sectarian decision" since it is not based "on any objective data or scientific or technical report" that justifies the positive impact of cutting the transfer, nor on a social level neither environmental nor economic.

On the other hand, there are studies, he defended this Monday, that support the negative impact.

Among them, one from the Segura Hydrographic Confederation, dependent on the Ministry for Ecological Transition, which has drawn up the basin plans, at the end of March last year, in which the agency calculated a loss of 12,000 hectares of crops in Murcia. , Alicante and Almería with the reduction of the transfer.

The central government is committed to making up for this reduction in water from the transfer with an increase in desalination, a solution that for the moment has not convinced the three affected autonomous communities.

Start of the Tagus transfer aqueduct at the Bolarque hydroelectric power station (Guadalajara). Ignacio Izquierdo

"Unilateral decision"

Andalusia joined the claims filed by the Governments of the Valencian Community and Murcia on March 21, the hydrological plan approved by the central Executive.

In its appeal before the Supreme Court, the Junta de Andalucía has argued that the modification of the flow was ordered without "having technical or legal reports to support it" and was taken "unilaterally" by the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, "modifying the agreement reached by the autonomous communities in the National Water Council, where an increase of up to six cubic meters per second was agreed", according to the Minister of Agriculture, Carmen Crespo.

The regional administration rejects "the cut" of 105 cubic hectometres, up to 8.6 cubic meters per second.

The popular leader also alleged that the central government's decision “puts the survival of 23,000 cultivated hectares at risk;

and the contributions that various municipalities in eastern Almería receive from the Tajo-Segura transfer to supply around 150,000 people”, reports