The resort’s efficiency awards now come with a signature on paper — and some serious plumbing next door in Vilamoura.
Amendoeira Golf Resort marked a quiet but considerable moment this week: a formal cooperation protocol with Águas do Algarve, committing the Silves resort to greater use of treated Água para Reutilização (ApR) on its two golf courses.
The signing, held at the resort itself, closed a day in which Portugal’s Minister of the Environment and Energy, Maria da Graça Carvalho, opened some of the largest water infrastructure projects the Algarve has seen in years. For a region whose golf depends on rainfall it can no longer take for granted, the timing was not accidental.
The agreement was signed at Amendoeira by the resort’s CEO, Eng.º Parreira Afonso, alongside director João Fernandes and the administration of Águas do Algarve. Its purpose is specific: increase the share of treated, reused water irrigating Amendoeira’s Faldo and O’Connor Jnr. courses, reducing the resort’s reliance on groundwater and dams already under pressure from tourism, agriculture and a growing resident population.
Why the Algarve’s Golf Courses Are Watching Closely
Golf accounts for roughly 15 cubic hectometres of water use across the Algarve each year. Águas do Algarve’s own Water Efficiency Plan targets 8 cubic hectometres of treated reused water in irrigation by the end of 2025 — 71 per cent of it earmarked for golf courses. Reach that, and around half of the region’s forty-odd courses will be running at least partly on reused water rather than water drawn from boreholes and reservoirs. (Sul Informação)
The Bigger Story, Down the Road in Vilamoura
Amendoeira’s signature came at the end of a single, dense day of Algarve water announcements. That same Wednesday, Maria da Graça Carvalho inaugurated the new Água para Reutilização station at Vilamoura — now described as the largest wastewater reuse plant of its kind in Europe, built at a cost of around €13 million with roughly 12 kilometres of new pipework and ten delivery points feeding golf courses, gardens and farmland. (Algarve Marafado)
The minister also laid the symbolic first stone for the Algarve’s new desalination plant in Albufeira — a €107.92 million contract awarded to the Aquapor–GS Inima consortium, around €56 million of it funded through Portugal’s Recovery and Resilience Plan, designed to convert 16 million cubic metres of seawater into drinking water a year, with capacity to grow to 24 million. (Agroportal) A new wastewater treatment station at Albufeira Poente closed out the visit.
A Resort That Was Already Paying Attention
Amendoeira arrives at this protocol with some form. The resort already holds Green Key certification, Turismo de Portugal’s Sustainability Committed label, and the Save Water efficiency seal — recognition, in each case, for measurable changes rather than good intentions. (Amendoeira Golf Resort) Courses that plan for water scarcity now are the ones still worth playing in fifteen years.
None of this changes what a round at Amendoeira feels like on the day — the Faldo’s tight, tree-lined finish is still the Faldo. But it says something about a destination when the golf infrastructure is built to outlast the next dry summer, not just survive it.
