Staff Reporter
IT may have rained in recent days on Spain’s Costa del Sol, but the welcome water is still not enough to end the ongoing drought in Andalucia, which has prompted the regional government to take drastic action.
This week, the Junta, as the regional government is known, has decided to allow hotels and tourist apartments to fill their swimming pools this summer, but is banning private pools and communal pools in apartment blocks to be filled or refilled.
This in practice means that these private pools will end up being closed, even if they are full right now, given that they lose around 2% of their water every day due to evaporation, according to La Opinion de Malaga.
The measure will affect Campo de Gibraltar, part of Almeria, and the entire Malaga province, for a total of some 80,000 outdoor pools.
It comes in the wake of a similar decision in the Catalunya region, which has already placed restrictions on water use and will also ban hotels and campsites from filling their pools when an emergency due to drought is declared.
The Junta, meanwhile, has already limited the daily consumption of water per person to 160 litres, due to the worryingly low levels of reservoirs in the region.
The authorities in Andalusia are to meet once more in two weeks’ time in order to reevaluate the situation.
The decision to close private and communal pools is likely to be an unpopular one among citizens in Andalucia, but the measure will, at least, ensure that the area’s vital tourism sector – i.e. its hotels and tourist apartments – is not negatively affected due to empty pools.
Read more:
- The Costa del Sol will have water until September after extending Marbella’s desalination plant
- Defected is coming to Marbella: Huge house music event will take over the city’s bullring arena
- Tourists face water restrictions in Spain’s Andalucia this year due to ongoing drought
