The farmers affected by the closure of the Urgell and Segarra-Garrigues canals last season will demand that the irrigation communities pay them for the grievance that has been caused to them.
These are farmers who could not irrigate herbaceous crops or plant summer cereals such as corn in order to reserve water to save fruit trees.
The Manifest platform of Gran Urgell made this proposal at an assembly held in Miralcamp (Pla d'Urgell) last Friday after confirming, almost a year after the closure of the canals, that the aid has not arrived.
Its members accuse the irrigation communities of both canals of not having fought hard enough to obtain the compensation agreed upon with the administrations.
According to the Manifest del Gran Urgell platform, the irrigation communities of the Urgell canal and the Segarra-Garrigues canal should have been the first interested in obtaining the compensation agreed upon by those who could not irrigate.
They accuse them of lacking "firmness" and "forcefulness" and consider that once they had the prioritization of irrigation decided to save the fruit trees, they already finished the work.
For the moment, the only aid that affected farmers will receive is from the Department of Climate Action, although they are subject to a large number of "conditions" such as the need to have insurance, among others.
The Ministry of Agriculture maintained its position of not paying aid. For this reason, now from the platform they consider that only aid from the Department of Climate Action cannot compensate for the sacrifice of farmers who stopped irrigating to face the drought and the closure of the canals.
Given this situation, they recommend that those affected apply for aid before March 18 at the Department and, in parallel, ask the irrigation communities to take responsibility for the damage they have suffered due to not being able to irrigate.
This is a property claim form that must be submitted before April 25, the date that will mark one year since the closure of the canals.
