The Junta de Andalucía will make a decision this coming Friday regarding whether they are approving the expansion of the decree. This decree was applied to La Axarquía in the past few months. The western Costa del Sol has been officially deemed to enter ‘drought emergency’ next week.
The expansion ultimately will mean potable water cannot be used to fill private swimming pools, wash streets, use on water gardens, for car washing, at parks or golf courses, ornamental foundations that have no closed circuit of water, beach showers, and drinking fountains. The Junta de Analucía is requesting people to lessening their domestic use of water where they can.
These announcements were made on the morning of Friday the 11th of March by Carmen Crespo, the regional government’s Minister for Agriculture and Sustainable Development. This change will bring measures along with it to generate new water resources in one of the most popular and busiest tourist areas in Andalucía. In addition, it comes when the amount of water within the reservoirs has decreased to less than 30 percent of capacity.
Carmen Crespo called on the government to utilise the EU Next Generation funds to develop new desalination plants to boost the amount of freshwater available and to subsidise desalinated water. Nothing else is known as of yet except for this extension of the drought emergency to the entire Costa del Sol.
The committee will also be discussing whether to reduce the amount of water used for irrigation in La Acarquía, which was already lessened by around 33 percent. If they choose to do this, it will mean more than 6,000 hectares of crops will be allocated 1,500 cubic metres of water rather than the current 2,000. This is much lower than the 6,000 that would be the case in normal times.
