Two parishes in Ponte de Lima were without water for several days. Águas do Alto Minho (AdAM) resumed supply this Monday and advanced O MINHO, which is studying the implementation of “a definitive solution” for the problem that is “recurring” at this time of the year.
In the parish of Serdedelo, there are houses that have been without water since last Wednesday, and the situation was resolved only at dawn today.
“During the night they rode with tank trucks to make water,” says O MINHO Maurício Pereira, owner of Casa do Cabo – Ponte de Lima, a local accommodation that was affected by the lack of water on Sunday during “five or six hours”.
“In any case, the problem persists. Right now we have water, which does not mean that at the end of the day it will not fail again, because they are not being able to respond ”, points out the businessman. “The infrastructure, apparently, does not have the necessary conditions for the number of people using the network, however this infrastructure was already used in previous years and, despite being very hot, it is not one of the hottest summers. Nor have there been any failures of the spring waters. We never had failures of four, five, six days, as is the case, we had failures of two hours and the situation was resolved ”, he adds.
Maurício Pereira notes that the solution is “very temporary”. “They are filling the water reservoirs using tanker trucks, but they do not guarantee that the reservoirs will not be empty again”, he highlights.
“Old pipelines blow up all”
In a part of the neighboring parish of Ribeira, water started to fail on Friday. Supply was replenished this morning.
MINHO contacted the President of the Board, Nuno Pimenta, who confirmed the cut in supply, which he informed the Chamber and AdAM.
The mayor reveals that the problem has happened again in the past, when water supply management was municipal, but not for so long. “The chamber officials soon solved the problem”, says Nuno Pimenta, considering that one of the problems is water leaks.
Questions and Answers: Águas do Alto Minho and its “successive clashes”
“The pipes are very old and the water coming with a little more pressure breaks all, the problem is also because there are many leaks”, he highlights, adding that the problem affected “between 30 to 40 fires”.
In the parish of Fornelos, where the problem is also common, contacted by O MINHO, the president of the Board, João Matos, revealed that last week there were “two or three days” when the supply was interrupted for “a few hours ”, But AdAM teams solved the problem.
“Failures are a recurring situation” and AdAM “is studying a definitive solution”
Questioned by O MINHO, AdAM confirmed that “the water supply in Ponte de Lima has already been restored”.
“During the past few days, and in order to ensure that there was no shortage of water for the populations, water was supplied using tanker trucks,” adds the company.
Considered that “supply failures are a recurring situation resulting from the increase in temperature and the high water consumption that is felt at this time of year”, AdAM guarantees that “it is studying the situation with a view to implementing a definitive solution for this problem that occurs every year ”.
In statements to Antena 1, the chairman of the board of directors of AdAM, Carlos Martins, stated that, “unfortunately, the infrastructures that exist on site do not allow us to create very high expectations of being able to solve the problem in a short period of time. We will try to ensure that next summer we create the conditions for not repeating itself ”.
Carlos Martins also refutes that the problem has to do with AdAM, which started operating earlier this year. “It is a structural problem, it is not because of the company’s change. The problem that arises is that the origins of this water when summer arrives are exhausted ”, he stresses.
Águas do Alto Minho is 51% owned by Águas de Portugal (AdP) and 49% by seven municipalities in the Viana do Castelo district (Arcos de Valdevez, Caminha, Paredes de Coura, Ponte de Lima, Valença, Viana do Castelo and Vila Nova de Cerveira), which make up the Alto Minho Intermunicipal Community (CIM).
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