The Minister of Environment and Energy today warned of the country’s current “particularly critical” moment, highlighting that storm Marta will especially affect the basins of the Sado, Tagus and Mondego rivers.
Maria da Graça Carvalho spoke to journalists after a meeting at the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) in Amadora, Lisbon, to assess the flooding situation in Portugal.
The next depression, which arrives tonight, will enter Portugal in a region between Sines and Lisbon and will affect especially the Sado basin, where Alcácer is in particular suffering floods, the minister said, explaining that the depression will then reach the Tagus river area, also in flood conditions, and another equally worrying river, the Mondego.
December and January were very rainy months, but the APA proactively discharged water from the dams to accommodate that water, equivalent to the consumption of the Portuguese for a year (more than 700 cubic hectometres discharged in January), and only thus was it possible to contain “major floods.”
In the briefing to journalists the minister said that Thursday was a worrying day on the Tagus due to discharges at dams in Spain, notably at the large Alcántara dam, which led to the flow almost doubling.
Today, it is already reduced (this afternoon the flow was 6,700 cubic metres per second at Almourol, when the critical point is 10,000). On Thursday it reached 9,000 cubic metres.
Maria da Graça Carvalho stated that everything is being done so that the impact of storm Marta is as small as possible, but she admitted that it may be necessary to evacuate more places.
The president of the APA, Pimenta Machado, also spoke of the “exceptional weather” the country is experiencing and gave as an example the Algarve dams that never filled and are now discharging, and said that the Santa Clara dam, in the southwestern Alentejo, will also discharge. Monte da Rocha, in the Sado basin, will discharge.
For today and Saturday there is a high risk of floods in the Vouga, Águeda, Mondego, Tagus, Sorraia and Sado rivers.
With flood risk (not high) are also the Lima, Cávado, Ave, Douro, Tâmega, Lis and Guadiana rivers.
