By Editorial EL PILÓN
This week, the Minister of the Environment, Susana Muhamad, confirmed the expansion of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Natural Park. In total, it will be made up of more than 573,312 hectares from Aracataca, Ciénaga, Fundación and Santa Marta, in the department of Magdalena; Dibulla (La Guajira); Pueblo Bello and Valledupar, in Cesar.
On the day of the announcement, the minister confirmed that this extension means that The Los Besotes multipurpose reservoir will not be built. “The delimitation of the park excludes the construction of large infrastructure, activities such as mining and large-scale forest plantations.”, explained the minister.
“ANOTHER VISION”
For Minister Muhamad, the future of Valledupar’s water should be considered from another point of view, “Not in the expansion of recruitment, but in ceasing to have technical losses of 60%”.
The Los Besotes reservoir was designed to guarantee water in Valledupar and the region in the next 50 yearswhen the city reaches one million inhabitants.
Lea: Los Besotes Reservoir, 50 years in search of feasibility
For the consolidation of this project, close to 150 million dollarsand would have a capacity to store 37.1 million cubic metersenough to guarantee water to Valledupar and irrigate some 10,000 hectares of soil in Los Corazones, Ovejas and Callao.
In this sense, the minister accused that in the region water is being wastedbecause it is not being put to efficient use.
“We are contaminating, and the solution that we continue to propose is more dams and more collection. If we continue to amplify economic and urban activities without control and inadequate management of water we are not building a sustainable society”ended.
OUTSIDE THE PLAN
The Government of President Gustavo Petro it did not include the Los Besotes project in the Pluriannual Investment Plan. Within this plan, there is only talk of investment in the protection of the ecosystems of the “Ciénaga de Zapatosa, the Guatapurí river and the other bodies of water in the department”.
On the environmental point, the national government plans the productive transformation, internationalization and climate action, “and land use planning around water and environmental justicehe”. However, he does not speak of the Multipurpose project.
Since his time as senator and mayor, President Petro He has been an opponent of reservoirs and dams. In his social networks, he opposed the Muña reservoir on the Bogotá river for years.