new round between La Pampa and Mendoza for Atuel before the Court

This Tuesday the 10 days that the Supreme Court gave to Mendoza to respond to a new presentation you made The Pampa for failure to comply with the ruling to allow 3.2 cubic meters per second of water to flow from the Atuel River, with a strong accusation. The Pampas government denounced over-irrigation in Mendoza fields, the creation of 100 reservoirs and even the diversion of water to a private winery.

The new judicial round between the provinces includes “satellite espionage”, a productive oasis, a town that is not growing, a harsh report from the Pampas Interjurisdictional Commission of the Atuel River (CIAI) with official data from Mendoza and the response of the “Governor of Water” Mendocino before the consultation of Clarion.

A little over a month ago, the Pampas government went to court to claim that Mendoza did not comply with the July 2020 ruling, which establishes a minimum flow for the entry of the Atuel to La Pampa and that still today it is not fulfilled.

The complaint was supported with photos, satellite images and data from the province of Mendoza itself, which according to La Pampa show 100 new water reservoirs, the diversion of three cubic meters per second of water to a winery, the same volume of water from the Atuel that Mendoza should leave for La Pampa.

“We have been working for a long time with the National University of La Pampa, where there is a team of academic professionals who study, stripped of any territorial or ideological bias, they analyzed the administration policy of the dams that Mendoza has on the bed of the Atuel River. “As it appears in the photos that make up the new lawsuit before the Court, they are being irrigated on unproductive lands,” he said. Sergio Ziliottogovernor of La Pampa Clarion.

In turn, he gave details of his presentation: “They are watering a winery, in times where it is not justified from a phenological point of view, they are assigning it the same as the Court fixed for the entry of the province of La Pampa. Since they have plenty of water, they are using it for destinations that are not really appropriate. by uses and by treaties, than what has to do with the productive issue, as long as the water does not reach the province of La Pampa”.

Furthermore, in the report they displayed with photos, from La Pampa they state: “If we only consider the period from 2020 (year of the ruling that sets the flow of 3.2m3/s) to the present, The reservoirs in the irrigation area went from a total of 160 to 260 (according to satellite image records), which implies an increase of 62.5% in just 4 years.”

“The National University of La Pampa had established that correct administration of the reservoirs guaranteed the entry of water to the province of La Pampa. With the new scheme, which we presented before the Court always with the statistical tables of Mendoza, guarantee the 3.2 cubic meters per second to La Pampa does not affect Mendoza’s productive system in any way,” says Ziliotto.

La Pampa achieved a favorable ruling from the Court in 2020 for an environmental lawsuit. But from the province they show demographic data. The Pampean governor highlights that the population changed after the dam. “On the Mendoza side, General Alvear, at that time had 3,000 inhabitants, while on this side, Santa Isabel and the entire wetland area where the river ran, a productive area, also had three thousand inhabitants. Today Santa Isabel continues with 3,000 inhabitants and General Alvear must be at 50, 60, 70,000 inhabitants,” says the Pampean president.

“Mendoza talks about the San Rafael oasis based on the use of the Atuel River. They talk about 5,000 hectares of oasis when they have generated a desert of millions of hectares in the province of La Pampa, appropriating an interjurisdictional resource,” says Ziliotto.

At the call of Clarionfrom the Mendoza government, led by the radical Alfredo Cornejoanswered Sergio MarinelliSuperintendent of Irrigation of Mendoza, better known as the “Governor of Water”.

“The Court determined that we had to agree on a flow of 3.2 cubic meters per second, where the subsequent discussion has taken place whether it is with works or actions. La Pampa insists that it has to be no matter what. If it is nothing, the Nation never had any type of budget, which is the third party that plays in this, but beyond the agreement there is no reality that Mendoza always maintained that in order to provide that flow of water there must be works “The water we use in Mendoza is not enough for what is productively needed in the oasis,” Marinelli remarks.

“La Pampa appears now because this year they take it as an exceptional year. However, this year is an average year, there is not even an average year, as a result of the fact that we come from more than 10 years with an extreme drought. This year it seems that There was a tremendous amount of water, but in reality that amount of water is neither more nor less than a little less than a year and a half in the province of Mendoza for the Atuel River,” the Mendoza official defends himself.

And he adds: “The number of hectares that we are irrigating, which are approximately 52,000 hectares in that basin, have had, according to the models that we manage and with which we demonstrate with data what we say based on what the river brought and what “finally available at the time of irrigation, a real availability that existed at the farm gate managed to half cover the demand for the crops.”

From Mendoza they assure that sometimes it flows along the river bed itself but that from the last point of Mendoza to the border with La Pampa, in the Vinchuqueros area, there are 160 kilometers.

“It is a river bed that is completely sandy, very wide because it has little slope, and after so many years of drought it is a tremendously dry sponge. The first months we began to dispense practically 5 cubic meters per second, 3.2 had to reach m3 to the limit, but that sponge began to fill and in the first months very little arrived. Once it was filled, starting in the fourth or fifth month of the year, a greater flow began to be generated. If we take the average flow rates. There have also been some rains, they have exceeded, on average, the flow that was committed,” explains Marinelli.

Although he makes a recognition: “What has not been achieved is that there is a permanent flow, precisely because it has always been clear, and we continue to maintain it, that for that to happen, investments and works must be made that the two provinces and the Nation must carry out.” improving system efficiency.”

─The province of La Pampa provided photos in the presentation and talks about diverting water to a winery

─They are two very rigged events as presented. In the first one there is a farm that looks like it was flooded. All these soils, like all system glues, have a high saline content. Among the agricultural tasks that are done annually, when a lot of salt begins to accumulate, one of those tasks is called, precisely, soil washing. Once every three or four years, some properties have to do that work so that the water carries the salts down so they can grow crops. There are very few cases, they are done every five years, and in the last 10 years and no one has done it, which has generated a high accumulation of salts in the soil.

─The winery is actually a company that was a winery many years ago, more than 20 years ago, which was the largest vineyard area in the world, which was 5,000 hectares when it was the Arizu Winery. That later was a well-known bankruptcy in Mendoza, the bankruptcy of Greco, and finally a Spanish company came and planted olive trees, in fact there are practically no vineyards, they have abandoned and uprooted almost the entire vineyard. There is an oil plant now and they irrigate about 1,500 hectares of olive trees, which at that time when the expenditure is marked is when the olive requires a greater amount of water so that it can obtain its maximum productivity. They have everything with technical irrigation, they have reservoirs and yet they have had to abandon part of the olive tree plot because there is not enough water.

“If the Atuel basin in Mendoza had to irrigate all the hectares that are suitable for planting crops and pastures, the truth is that there is a lot of abandonment precisely because there is not enough water,” they maintain in Mendoza and will communicate this to the Supreme Court. of Justice.

Before the Court, Mendoza presented a works plan, which highlights the request for waterproofing the Atuel channel because he claims that the river has very little slope and the channel becomes very wide. “What La Pampa asks for is unfeasible to do, we would have to dry half the oasis to be able to address that situation“, summarizes the Mendoza “Water Governor”.

The conflict began in 1947, when Mendoza inaugurated the reservoir The Nihuil on the Atuel River, just over 80 kilometers from San Rafael. It occupies more than 9,000 hectares and is one of the hydroelectric complexes that generates energy for the country. However, in La Pampa they claim that the dam dried up the continuity of the Atuel in La Pampa and had a negative environmental impact in that province.

La Pampa went to the Supreme Court, achieving a ruling in 1987, but after the constitutional reform of 1994, it obtained another favorable ruling in 2020.

“In addition to the 3.2 m3 per second, the Court mentions that the two provinces have to agree on actions and works to guarantee the entry of water to the province of La Pampa. It set 120 days, La Pampa raises the issue of actions , irrigation efficiency as an action. Mendoza proposes works, but the limitation of the works is the funds. In that discussion, together with the national government, we proposed that the issue could be resolved through actions. water,” says Ziliotto.

The National Government by law is obliged to create a Basin Authority in each of the interjurisdictional basins of the country. After the 2020 ruling, the Alberto Fernández government called on the provinces to form Atuel, the 120 days passed, but the provinces did not agree.