Almada Lifts Its Water Alert Tonight After Fifty-Four Days of Overnight Cut-Offs on the Caparica Coast
The alert was declared on 8 July and extended to 31 August. Reservoirs are back above 70 percent, at 72 percent on Sunday. The overnight supply cuts, the garden-watering ban and the closure of beach showers all lapse tonight.
Almada leaves its water-supply alert behind at the end of Monday, closing a fifty-four day emergency that put overnight cut-offs, a garden-watering ban and a run of street protests into the middle of the Costa da Caparica summer.
The situacao de alerta was declared on 8 July and later extended to 31 August. In a written answer to Lusa on Friday, the municipal water and sanitation service, SMAS de Almada, said reservoir levels had been holding above 70 percent, which allows the position to be viewed "with greater tranquillity, while naturally maintaining regular monitoring of storage levels". The figure posted on Sunday was 72 percent.
What the alert actually did
An alert status is the legal instrument that lets a council impose preventive and reactive measures. In Almada that meant total supply cuts in designated zones between 22:00 and 06:00, announced in advance, and a ban on every use of mains water that was not domestic or essential. Off the list went watering of public and private gardens and golf courses, washing vehicles, filling swimming pools, the showers and foot-baths at the beaches, ornamental fountains and artificial lakes.
Alongside the restrictions, SMAS ran repairs at points of significant loss and worked to detect and cut off irregular connections to the public network, several of them feeding irrigation systems. Restrictions were relaxed in stages as average reserves stabilised. The council, led by the Socialist mayor Ines de Medeiros, reinforced supply to the Costa da Caparica area with new boreholes.
The politics ran alongside the plumbing. Medeiros governs under a management agreement with the CDU after failing to win an absolute majority, and the PSD brought a municipal censure motion over the crisis. It was rejected, and was in any case non-binding.
The bit that does not end today
Lifting an alert is not the same as fixing a network. The Caparica failures were a symptom of ageing infrastructure and leakage, and Almada is not an outlier: the new president of the state water group Aguas de Portugal used the episode in July to warn that roughly a quarter of the country's treated water leaks away before it reaches a tap. Mainland Portugal also entered meteorological drought in early August after the driest July of the century, which is the backdrop against which municipal reserves are now being read.
For residents, the practical change is that normal use resumes and the summer restrictions lapse. For the council, the reservoir monitoring continues, and so does the repair programme.
What this means for expats
- Alerts can return: the July declaration came with little warning, and its extension to 31 August was announced with the restrictions already in force. If you live on the Caparica side, watch the SMAS channels rather than national media.
- The network problem is national: a quarter of treated water is lost to ageing pipes, which is why one hot summer can tip a municipality into restrictions.
- Private boreholes are regulated: if you are considering one for a garden, our guide to sinking a borehole in Portugal covers the licensing rules and the fines for an undeclared one.
- The drought file stays open: the mainland entered meteorological drought in August, and autumn rainfall will decide how the next summer starts.
