According to Ecologistas en Acción, the water soled by the irrigators of the municipality of Villena (Alicante) to a bottling industry that the DANONE Company is trying to build in the municipality, would suppose a clear break of the Water Law.
The Water Law just allows the water sale between individuals when this one is set aside to a use of equal or superior preference, according to the article 60 of said law. In this article, the town supplying, followed by irrigation, industry, aquiculture and others, are established as priority use.
The production of bottled mineral water is considered an industrial use; behind in priority of the agricultural use, to what at present the water of those aquifers is dedicated. In fact, the mineral water is regulated by the Mining Law, considering it almost a mining resource, being evident its industrial character.
For this reason, Ecologistas en Acción is requesting the Ministry of Environment and the Hydrographical Confederation of the Jucar River, not to allow that change of using, when the aquifers of Villena count on with the “provisional denouncement of overexploitation”.
This action by the irrigators of Villena proves the unnecessary of the Jucar-Vinalopo transfer, justified in a water shortage in this last region, where the town of Villena is located. Also, Ecologistas en Acción considers that what happened in Villena is a one more challenge of the unnecessary and unfair that the building of the transfer of the Ebro River would be, based on a so-called lack of resources on the Mediterranean coast, when some irrigators that are constantly claiming for water to keep their crops, do not have any problem selling said water to a highest bidder, if he pays more than what they had paid to obtain it. In this sense, it is obvious that behind the demands of the transfer of the Ebro River, we can find the supplying to new real estate developments and golf courses, economic activities much more profitable than agriculture.
Finally, Ecologistas en Acción claims the central Government to modify the Water Law, and to totally prohibit the selling of water between individuals. This would prevent those events, as the one of Villena for never being considered.
Moreover, the water sale between individuals goes against the waters public character, because the users of water, in the case of the Villena irrigators, own the water just for a certain period of time so they are not really in any case their owner.
