The declaration of drought emergency applied to La Axarquía has been extended to the Costa del Sol. Malaga city has a lack of water which is also a very serious matter at present. The water will pass from a state of pre-alert to alert and this will be decided on Friday by the regional government’s Drought Management Committee.
The meeting will also decide whether to reduce supplies for irrigation in La Axarquía. They were previously cut in October by 33 percent. The roadmap to dealing with drought says that the western Costa del Sol would be in an ideal situation if La Concepción reservoir has less then 35.6 cubic hectometres on March 1st. However, that figure was achieved weeks ago and the reservoir now holds just 23.3 Hm3. This means it is 37.7 percent of capacity.
The three reservoirs which supply it in Malaga city are Conde del Guadalhorce, Guadalteba and Guadalhorce and they decreased below 140 Hm3 over a month ago. They now hold around 127.6 Hm3, however, the worst case is in La Vinuela which is at the stage of being declared a dead reservoir due to the fact it is only holding 23.6 Hm3 compared to 165.4 if it were full.
Currently, there are no plans to reduce supplies to households. However, the capacity of the desalination plant in Marbella would be raised to 10 Hm3 per year. In addition, the Fuengirola wells would supply 0.450 Hm3 per month and water could be supplied from the Guadalhorce-Limonero system and Campo de Gibraltar if available. Malaga still has enough water for the next two years, however, plans are being created for measures in case there is inadequate rainfall this coming spring.
