Portugal will bring forward the completion of the giant Alqueva dam project by 10 years to 2015 to take advantage of its tourism potential, Prime Minister Jose Socrates said Saturday. The government will invest 900 million euros (1.2 billion US dollars), much of it aid from the European Union, by 2013 to meet this goal, he told reporters during a visit to the semiarid Alentejo region where the dam is located.
"The state is in a hurry to complete Alqueva because it feels the market is reacting. Alqueva is sparking interest from the tourism sector," Socrates said.
The gates of the dam, about 180 kilometres (110 miles) southeast of Lisbon, swung shut in February 2002, creating Western Europe's largest artificial lake.
So far some 6,500 hectares of farmland is in reach of water from the dam.
But when a planned network of 4,000 kilometres of underground pipes is completed 110,000 hectares of farm land, or roughly 5.5 percent of the Alentejo's total agricultural land, will be in reach of water.
Most of the land will be used for the production of corn, wheat and sunflowers while a number of high-end resorts are planned for the artifical lake's surroundings.
The dam is 96 metres high, and when filled to capacity, will have the capacity to produce an average of 300 giga-watts of electrity per hour, enough to meet the needs of a town of 180 thousand people.
The project was initially conceived during a rightist dictatorhip in 1957 to provide water for a new industrial city but its goal now is to boost tourism and agriculture in the Alentejo, one of western Europe's poorest regions.
Source: Agence France-Presse
