Urgent Rock Art SOS and Request for help

Submitted by Andy B on Monday, 13 August 2001 Page Views: 638

Please take a minute to sign an important petition at this site.

Very beautiful, mysterious, and important prehistoric rock art is about to be sacrificed for the sake of the ill-conceived and economically illogical Alqueva Dam project on the Guadiana River along the Portuguese and Spanish border.

There is almost nothing good to say about the Alqueva Dam project. According to
independent and realistic studies, the dam is unlikely to bring any of the benefits that promoters and developers claim.
-- Promised industrial development may never be built in the remote area.
-- Nether the EU nor Portuguese government current backers) have committed to fund the additional $1.3 billion plus that will be needed to fully complete the entire Alqueva Reservoir complex, which would include 9 more dams and irrigation canals.
-- The reservoir's trapped water may become very polluted from upstream sewage and agricultural chemicals.
-- The water may be too smelly from rampant algae growth and pollutants for resort usages.
-- The dam may produce only enough electricity to run huge pumps to move water up and out
of the reservoir into irrigation canals.
-- Irrigation water may be too expensive for economically viable farming.
-- And, it's possible that the irrigation water may leach salts from the desert-like soil of the area, which could render the earth barren.

Besides submerging the priceless rock art -- the Alqueva Dam reservoir (the largest in Europe) will
bring the demise of the following:
-- One of the last wilderness areas in Europe and Iberia.
-- One million trees gone.
-- Valuable cork and olive trees cut, they now provide income to local inhabitants.
-- An important habitat for many endangered species, including some species of fish that may only exist in the Guadiana River.
-- Migratory routes of the Iberian Lynx (It is the most endangered wild cat in the world. There are only a few hundred alive).
-- Algarve Coast. An enormous amount of sediment will get trapped behind the dam; this stuff constantly renews and adds to the coastline by the
Algarve. There is already less going to the sea than there should be, due to existing dams in Spain. As the coastline erodes, beaches diminish or even disappear. This certainly would not help the existing tourist industry. The sediment also plays its part in the marine life. Hurt that and the fishing industry also feels it.

Please forward this message to your friends, and post it on message boards so others can sign the petition. If many people sign the petition, there's a chance that officials in charge of the project will abandon this

Below is the text of the petition. Again, please sign it at this site
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Alqueva/petition.html .
Signatures will be gathered there and then sent to the appropriate authorities.

Thank you for your assistance.

Mila Simoes de Abreu , Ludwig Jaffe and Bill Laben

Contributor Bio for Andy B: Megalithic Portal Founding Editor.

<< Company threatening Nine Ladies & Stanton Moor Quarry taken over

Sites under Threat

First ever interior scan of Silbury Hill >>