Lisbon, July 20, 2025 (Lusa) - Mainland Portugal has annual water losses that could supply the country for three months, around 180 million cubic metres, which is equivalent to wasting 12 Olympic-sized swimming pools per hour.
“It’s the water that I’m collecting, treating, pumping into the reservoir and sending to people’s homes, and we need to recover it,” says Eduardo Marques, president of the Association of Portuguese Companies for the Environment (AEPSA).
In an interview with Lusa, he said that water tariffs need to go up, as the sector has become used to subsidies. He thinks that, overall, water is cheap and talks about how inefficient the sector is, starting with water losses, which are around 27%.
In addition to the publicly available data on losses (in pipes, branches, or reservoirs), Eduardo Marques also provides other figures: private concessions, which serve 20% of the population, have a significantly lower average loss rate of around 13%.
According to the official’s calculations, if the whole country had the same efficiency as the private sector, the country would save 90 million cubic metres of water, equivalent to a reservoir with a base the size of a football field and nine kilometres high.
One of the reasons for the losses is the poor condition of the infrastructure, but according to the official, the country is rehabilitating only an eighth of what it should.
"The private sector follows the contracts and carries out rehabilitation, but we are passing on a great investment responsibility to future generations throughout the country".
Eduardo Marques added that the rehabilitation of assets must be done “at the right times” and acknowledges that this type of investment “rarely wins votes” because it involves pipes hidden underground, so “contractors often extend this type of investment over time.”
With less and less rain and forecasts that the situation will worsen, he says that, when it comes to water, “the country must be more efficient”.
And this efficiency, he assures us, relies on desalination plants and additional dams, and above all on reducing losses.
“What we can save in public networks exceeds the capacity of the desalination plant, and we can achieve it without major investments. Many people believe that reducing water losses requires replacing pipes, but efficient management also cuts losses in the short term,” he says.
That is why the government’s proposal for the sector, “Água que Une” (Water that Unites), criticises the large investments planned for pipe repairs. But he adds that the sector needs a lot of money for investments that must happen soon, because “you need water to live”.
“Having money lets me work efficiently, use water wisely, protect the environment, and combine the two,” warns the president of AEPSA, an association of Portuguese companies in the environment sector, from water to waste management.
There are 45 members, representing 20,000 workers and an annual turnover of €1.2 million.
When Lusa questioned the official, he generally expressed reservations about the Algarve’s water efficiency plan presented by the government; he highlighted the need to focus more on good management than on rehabilitating pipes and noted that using water from wastewater treatment plants is not always feasible.
What is essential, he said, is to promote fair tariffs, increase competition in the sector and have efficient systems, both in urban public supply and in agriculture.
FP/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
