But the wáter lacks

The fears of who depend on a crucial resource at Piura Coast.

 

 

By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo

 

 

    In mid-2006, the news told about the hope for the agriculture in Piura Region because it would allow to experience with new crops or to improve the already existent ones. In fact, the Czech company Dio Latina thought to invest in sugarcane cropsat Lower Chira Valley, between Amotape and Miramar (Paita Province). However, the wáter lacked to cover these needs. Someones stated that the existent reserves were not enough.

 

 

One of the last places at Piura Coast where irrigation works were made was Cieneguillo, a large quicksand located flanking the border of Piura and Sullana Provinces. Progressively, it was filling up with limes, mangos, some corn, some sugarcane, and the persistent carobs.

 

 

    At 8 miles to the south of Sullana City, irrigating a estate is not necessarily a relaxing experience but something truly stressful because it depends on the turn of each owner, and taking advantage of the few distributed water at the most. Some owners chose to build reservoirs to store water, what require eight hours for having full. Then, the irrigation is made through a canal system by using the gravity force.

 

 

A estate usually takes a dozen of people for irrigation work and fruit harvest, mainly the lime. This product is furtherly sold to the processing plants located at Sullana City’s Industrial Zone, that turns it into essential oil or food for cattle, depending on if they use the pulp or the shell, respectively.

 

 

“Everything is used from the lime,” who work in this industry say. But for having a good lime, fertilizant and care aside, water is mainly required. An owner can gain the equivalent to US$ 30 per quintal of harvested lime… but the initial investment quietly can be multiplied by 100 at least.

 

 

    Poechos again

It seems the problem was not the natural lack of water but its bad planning and distribution. Chira River Right Bank Irrigators Board’s past vice-president Jorge Sánchez said us in 2006 that “despite there is a complete understructure in coated canals, main as well as secondary, there’s no water at Somate Zone [at the north of Sullana City] and Parkinsonia [today Cieneguillo].”

 

 

However, when the lands were assigned to the settlers, there were reservoirs those might store from five to ten million liters of water. “Technically, it should come,” he Sánchez stated, “but the past authorities allowed to plant crops and [the] agricultural zone expanded in the highlands of the [San Lorenzo] Colonization harming the lowlands.” Finally, the injured ones were relocated around Tambogrande and Malingas, at the southeast.

 

 

Sánchez said about 300 motorbombs engine by gasoline extracted water from the canals, decreasing the chance of the liquid to reach the arid lands of Middle Piura Valley, located just to the east of Sullana City in a 22-mile ratio, and Lower Piura Valley, located about 60 miles to the south. The point is The Poechos Reservoir, that dams Chira River at its upper course, seems not to have enough water for everyone.

 

 

    The towns of Upper Chira Valley had electricity since the beginning of this century. Sinersa Company operates two hydroelectric centers by using the reservoir’s water that had 1000-billion-liter capacity, but what today just keeps a half due to sedimentation problems. However, the work of Peruvian’s de-facto President Juan Velasco Alvarado doesn’t seem to be perfect at all.

  

“The Northern Canal has design problems we had denounced – no the Technical Administration of [Chira’s] Irrigation District nor the Users Board have some intervention and the Energoprojeckt workers follow building with 50 years ago’s designs,” Jorge Sánchez stated.

 

 

Despite, new crops like the grape or the pepper were pulled to introduce and more sugarcane plantation areas were projected for obtaining ethanol, the fuel that apparently will rplace to gasoline. The problem seemed to be all those ideas still considered the initial capacity of the reservoir, not the actual.

 

 

Sánchez said that addressed to attract new investment in the agriculture sector, the authorities did not coordinate their work and, according to him, the solution seemed to be stopping. “Those instances that manage the wáter should have very clear the planting of any crop must not be allowed, even with technified irrigation, in any area that never has been planted until the initial works to be made at the reservoir,” he sustained.

 

 

For this, the Regional Government of Piura and Sinersa proposed to work in different points of the set, even until the boundary with Ecuador, what could start additional paperwork. The complementary solution, until that moment, was to build the reservoirs of Santa Victoria and Casuras, those would take advantage of excessive water from the rainy periods.

 

 

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