Case Study 1: Matarraña River Basin - Euwareness

Within the Central Union, the irrigation communities belonging to the middle river basin
(mainly in Maella) are the largest ones and, therefore, they are dominant. As a matter
of fact, the Central Union is located in Maella, the president is currently a person from
this municipality, and the Maella irrigation communities dominate the directive board.
This situation is perceived by the irrigation communities and municipalities of both the
higher and lower river basin as a factor biasing the Central Union decision in favour of
the interests of the middle and lower river basin. This situation was evident after the
CHE, once the central government adopted the Decree on urgent measures against
draught in 1995, fostered the construction of a water pumping project from the
Matarraña to the Pena dam 2 . While this decision provoked the rejection of the
municipalities of Beceite and Valderobres for considering that it would cause a severe
damage to the river, the Central Union was firmly in favour.
Irrigation communities
There are 39 irrigation communities along the Matarraña river basin. Irrigation
communities have their own statutes and regulate the rules of the game to distribute
water for irrigation which is taken directly from the river. They all have their own
irrigation channels, many of which were built centuries ago. These channelling
infrastructures need urgent modernisation. On the one hand, irrigation channels are
obsolete and lose water that is filtered into the soil. To this respect, the Aragon regional
government has partly financed the replacement of Arabic channels by tubes in some
parts of the river basin (especially after the floods in October 23 rd seriously damaged
the old channels). On the other hand, the flooding system of irrigation should be
replaced by the dropping system, as the latter has a 90-95% efficiency.
Depending on the quantity amount of water available, the irrigation communities decide
how and when to distribute water between irrigation users. There are two main forms of
distributing water adopted by the irrigation communities: by turns or by times. If
irrigation is organised by turns, each plot is assigned a day of the week or the month to
irrigate. According to tradition, some irrigation communities establish that water can be
used by the assigned users until dawn the day after. When there is water scarcity,
irrigation is normally organised by times, which means that each plot can be irrigated
during certain hours previously agreed upon.
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