Bento, Sofia

Brás, Oriana Rainho

Fernandes, Lúcia de Oliverira

Meira, Teresa Bezerra

Portuguese

UTL Repository

Source URL: http://www.environmentandsociety.org/node/7919Print date: 05 February 2020 12:03:49Half a Century of Public Participation to Stop Pollution in the Alviela River,from 1957 to TodaySofia Bento, Teresa Bezerra Meira, Lúcia de Oliveira Fernandes, and Oriana Rainho BrásThe Portuguese section of the Environmental Justice Atlas  (EJAtlas) features a selection of environmentalconflicts in Portugal after the democratic revolution of 1974, and the Alviela River pollution  is one of them.The EJAtlas  is a map of environmental conflicts in the world, set up and managed by Environmental JusticeOrganizations, Liabilities, and Trade  (EJOLT), a program supported by the European Commission.Subsequently, the exploratory project Portugal: Ambiente em Movimento  (Portugal: Environment on the Move)took this work further and built a website showcasing 60 conflicts in Portugal, including the Alviela River case .The Alviela River rises in the Serra de Aire e Candeeiros mountain range, extending for 51 kilometers andflowing into the right bank of the Tejo River, near the Figueira Valley in Central Portugal.In 1957, during the conservative dictatorship in Portugal, which lasted from 1926 to 1974, a local man namedJoaquim Duarte organized a petition denouncing the pollution of the Alviela River and sent it to the president ofthe Ministers’ Council, António de Oliveira Salazar himself. This act marked the birth of the “Alviela Anti-Pollution Commission” (CLAPA).A public action promoted by CLAPA (Comissão de Luta Anti-poluição do Alviela)This is an undated document found at the Archives of CLAPA and the Junta de Freguesia de Pernes. The use was authorized by the Juntade Freguesia de Pernes (Pernes Town Council).This work is used by permission of the copyright holder.In the 1950s, effluents from tanneries had started to affect local flourmills and olive oil mills, as well as fishingand sand extraction, natural resources closely associated with the riverside villages’ livelihoods. These effluentswere mainly solid waste, until, in the 1970s, the use of chromium salts worsened the pollution (Cautela 1977). In1970, the same Joaquim Duarte took water samples to the National Assembly arguing they should be analyzed.Bento, Sofia; Bezerra Meira, Teresa; Oliveira Fernandes, Lúcia de; Rainho Brás, Oriana. "Half a Century of Public Participation to StopPollution in the Alviela River, from 1957 to Today." Arcadia (Summer 2017), no. 20.Source URL: http://www.environmentandsociety.org/node/7919Print date: 05 February 2020 12:03:49The press took an interest and local inhabitants became increasingly attentive to signs of river pollution in theAlviela River.Soon after the democratic revolution, in 1974, CLAPA met with the State Subsecretary for the Environment, theAlcanena town council, and the association of tannery industries. They agreed to evaluate the situation, and, in1979, the government built a wastewater treatment plant in Alcanena; due to funding restraints the constructionwas only finished in 1988. However, the problem of pollution in the Alviela River was still far from resolved.The plant did not have the capacity to cope with the actual waste produced by the tanneries, and showed signs ofmaintenance problems. Moreover, local authorities and inhabitants declared that its technology was inadequateand obsolete.External video. Linkhttps://www.youtube.com/embed/n5CUPSKNVPY .This video (in Portuguese) shows a clip from TV4Ribatejo, in which a fisherman and boat builder is interviewed. The Alviela River flows into the Tejo River and was once one of Lisbon’s major watersources. In 2009, when the video was shot, it was one of the most polluted rivers in Portugal. The fisherman claimed he did not catch a single fish for a whole year, and not even frogs could be seen in theriver. The persistence of sources of pollution and the problems of the ETAR built in Alcanena was not able to prevent the continuous death of fish in the riverIndeed, a decade later, in 2004, the president of Vaqueiros parish reported the appearance of dead fish in the riverand demanded that the national water authority and the Alcanena town council take a stand. Following evidenceof continuous serious pollution, local inhabitants mobilized once more. In 2005, following an appeal byCLAPA, hundreds of people walked from Pernes to the source of the river in protest. In 2006, 40 entities(municipalities and parishes that bordered the river, parliamentary representatives, and NGOs) created theCommission for the Defense of the Alviela River. The latter committed to carrying out a detailed survey of theriver’s environmental conditions, and demanded funds for developing diagnostic studies and solutions to theproblem. That year, more than 10,000 citizens signed a petition by the Commission for the Defense of theAlviela River asking parliament to commit to the rehabilitation of the river.Bento, Sofia; Bezerra Meira, Teresa; Oliveira Fernandes, Lúcia de; Rainho Brás, Oriana. "Half a Century of Public Participation to StopPollution in the Alviela River, from 1957 to Today." Arcadia (Summer 2017), no. 20.Source URL: http://www.environmentandsociety.org/node/7919Print date: 05 February 2020 12:03:49Poster from CLAPA (Comissão de Luta Anti-poluição do Alviela). On the top of the poster we see a sentence in Portuguese: “Those whopollute pay!”This is an undated document found at the Archives of the CLAPA and the Junta de Freguesia de Pernes. The use was authorized by theJunta de Freguesia de Pernes (Pernes Town Council).This work is used by permission of the copyright holder.Two years later, the town council of Santarém promoted a multidisciplinary study on the rehabilitation of theAlviela ecosystem, which was conducted by the company Hidroprojecto. The authors confirmed that the maincauses of pollution were the tanneries in Alcanena and cattle farming in Santarém. They proposed to create acoalition of producers, industries, and municipalities, to carry out the integrated treatment of effluents, themonitoring of the river, and its rehabilitation.In 2009, the national water authority, the Alcanena town council, and the users’ association of the wastewatertreatment plant agreed to a protocol that involved undertaking concerted actions to improve wastewatertreatment. Also in 2009, the municipality of Santarém started a project named SOS Alviela, located in Vaqueiros,to train local inhabitants to identify native species and to report signs of pollution in the Alviela. In 2014, thePortuguese environment agency signed a protocol with the town councils of Alcanena and Santarém torehabilitate Alcanena’s wastewater treatment system and the Mouchão-Pernes Waterfalls in a seemingly definitesolution to the problem. However, despite a commitment to complete construction by 2015, in February 2015works had yet to start.The Alviela River tells one of the oldest histories of popular mobilization against pollution in Portugal.However, this history’s final chapters are still to come. Despite 60 years of mobilization by local citizens andseveral attempts to bring together national and local authorities, as well as industry, to stop pollution andrehabilitate the river, it remains seriously polluted. How long will it be until the river flows clean is a questionthat remains to be answered. Arcadia Collection: Bento, Sofia; Bezerra Meira, Teresa; Oliveira Fernandes, Lúcia de; Rainho Brás, Oriana. "Half a Century of Public Participation to StopPollution in the Alviela River, from 1957 to Today." Arcadia (Summer 2017), no. 20.Source URL: http://www.environmentandsociety.org/node/7919Print date: 05 February 2020 12:03:49Water HistoriesFurther readings: Cautela, Afonso. Ecologia e luta de classes em Portugal. Reportagens. Socicultur: Lisboa, 1977.•How to cite: Oliveira Fernandes, Lúcia de, Oriana Rainho Brás, Teresa Bezerra Meira, and Sofia Bento. “Half a Century ofPublic Participation to Stop Pollution in the Alviela River, from 1957 to Today.” Environment & Society Portal,Arcadia (Summer 2017), no. 20. Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society.https://doi.org/10.5282/rcc/7919 . This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .2017 Lúcia de Oliveira Fernandes, Oriana Rainho Brás, Teresa Bezerra Meira, and Sofia BentoThis refers only to the text and does not include any image rights.Please click on an image to view its individual rights status.ISSN 2199-3408Environment & Society Portal, ArcadiaWebsites linked in this text:https://ejatlas.org/featured/portugal•http://ejatlas.org/conflict/poluicao-por-curtumes-rio-alviela-pernes-portugal•https://ejatlas.org/•http://www.ejolt.org/•http://www.ambientemovimento.org/•http://www.ambientemovimento.org/rio-alviela•https://www.youtube.com/embed/n5CUPSKNVPY•

Half a century of public participation to stop pollution in the Alviela river, from 1957 to today

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Half a century of public participation to stop pollution in the Alviela river, from 1957 to today

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