Ria Formosa: Seahorses and Pollution

It was announced for the beginnings of April the Ria Formosa week, whose symbol given was the seahorse.

In fact, the biggest seahorse community already existed at Ria Formosa, but it was before ETAR (in English: waste-water treatment plant) installation. Since then the seahorse community has been decreasing overtime. This fact does not seem to disturb people because they ignore the relevance of this specie. People forget that the sea horse is a biomarker for the ecological water quality of Ria Formosa and they should be more alert for what happens at Ria Formosa.

The Ria Formosa week has the support and promotion from one of the major polluters agents and also an environmental association which has never pronounced about Ria Formosa pollution.

One of the participating entities in this lie is the company Águas do Algarve which is responsible for the ETAR. And that also has a member of the board of directors, António Pina, our known city council president.

The company Águas do Algarve is confident that nobody will supervise its action and so the analytical results of the water that is discharged at Ria Formosa are not made public. We that are with this theme for a long time do not dismiss a regular visit to the website of Águas do Algarve, where we can find that since August 2014 that the analytical results from all the Algarve ETARs (waste-water treatment plants) are published.

António Pina as member of the board of directors should explain what is happening with this company, but with the problem of direct sewage he prefers to get silent, because this of pollution only gives boredoms. His only interest in what refers to waste water is the fecal contamination, like it was the fecal contamination that is killing the bivalve molluscs.

The fecal contamination has implications in what refers to production zones and only becomes a problem if the levels of contamination are the correspondent to class C. If Pina defended Ria Formosa for a good production zone, he would fight for the creation of good conditions to obtain the A category, but it isn’t of his interest and even less is the interest to combat the real pollution, the one that kills and destroys.

His (the António Pina) production is from genetically modified oysters and so his production resists to certain types of pollution, allowing him to get some advantage, and still the clam producers will see the death of their clam production. Of course that this is also an interest from the governments that want to end up with all the people that work and live from Ria Formosa and so the destine of this natural environment will be exclusively for turism. To achieve such aim there is a conjugation between the strategy of national and provincial plans and also legislation.

With or without the Ria Formosa wee, the farce will continue as the pollution came to stay.

Who would say that the responsible people for the pollution are the ones defending the good environment in Ria Formosa!