Porto, Portugal, July 30, 2025 (Lusa) - The north region of Portugal will receive €33.5 million in investment to prevent flooding on several rivers, with €24.4 million financed by European funds from the North 2030 programme, which was signed on Wednesday.
"We will invest a total of more than €30 million and the regional [operational programme] will finance 75%, which is good news," said the president of the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA), José Pimenta Machado, today on board a boat on the Douro River, where the protocol was signed, on a trip between the banks of Vila Nova de Gaia and Porto.
He also considered it "good news" that the APA, through the Environmental Fund, and the local authorities will share the non-co-financed part (12.5% for the APA and 12.5% for the local authorities).
This is the collaboration protocol ‘Water Resource Management - River Contracts’, signed today between the Northern Regional Coordination and Development Commission (CCDR-N), the APA and the local authorities concerned.
Also present at the event, the Minister for the Environment, Maria da Graça Carvalho, pointed out that the protocol and the contracts signed are part of the Government's ‘Water that Unites’ agenda, specifically in the area of “renaturalisation of rivers and the fight against flooding”, specifying the investment figure at €33.5 million.
The minister also emphasised the “technical monitoring that the APA will carry out on these projects”, considering it a “programme for territorial cohesion but also for cohesion between public institutions which, together – the CCDR, the APA and the local authorities – will work for the benefit of nature, the environment and people’s lives”.
In response to some comments and requests made by some mayors during the ceremony, Maria da Graça Carvalho said that “mayors are fundamental” and stressed that “it is not possible, at this moment, to carry out projects against the will of mayors and the public”.
The president of the CCDR-N, António Cunha, said that “sustainable water management, water security and the quality of public supply and sanitation services are no longer just technical or comfort issues, they are increasingly issues of environmental justice, territorial coherence and community resilience”.
“In the case of the North region, they are an urgent priority,” he assured.
The package will finance projects in 17 Areas of Significant Potential Flood Risk (ARPSI) across the North, divided between three hydrographic regions: Minho and Lima, Cávado, Ave and Leça, and Douro.
Specifically, the interventions range from river bed restoration, bank stabilisation using natural engineering techniques, riparian zone recovery, creation of retention basins, desilting and natural floodplains, development of flood emergency plans, water level monitoring and dam modernisation.
In Minho and Lima, five river Areas of Significant Potential Flood Risk are involved: Monção (Minho River, financed at €1.8 million), Caminha (Coura River, €832,000), Valença (Minho River, €1.07 million), Ponte da Barca and Arcos de Valdevez (Lima and Vez rivers, €1.4 million) and Ponte de Lima (Lima river, €404,000).
In the Cávado, Ave and Leça basins, five river Areas of Significant Potential Flood Risk are involved: Braga-Este (Este river, €2.1 million), Braga - Padim da Graça (Cávado river, €548,000), Esposende (Cávado river, €828,000), Póvoa de Varzim (Alto river, €441,000) and Santo Tirso (Ave river, €739,000).
In the Douro basin, seven interventions are planned in Areas of Significant Potential Flood Risk: in Amarante (Tâmega river, 1.4 million euros), in Baião (Teixeira river, 1.9 million euros), in Chaves (Tâmega river, €2.2 million), Lousada (Mezio and Sousa rivers, €774,000), Mirandela (Tua river, €1.5 million), Régua (Douro river, €1.8 million) and Porto - Vila Nova de Gaia (Douro river, €2.5 million).
According to CCDR-N, these interventions are aimed at “strengthening the resilience of areas at greatest risk of flooding through the implementation of concrete measures for prevention, protection, planning and water rehabilitation”.
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