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Date Published: 04/11/2021

ARCHIVED - Water restrictions in the Guadalquivir basin due to drought

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The decree aims to conserve water in 554 municipalities in Andalucía, Castilla-La Mancha and Extremadura

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - Water restrictions in the Guadalquivir basin due to drought

Within the next 10 days the Government is expected to announce a decree limiting the water usage of 4.3 million people in the communities of Andalucía, Castilla-La Mancha and Extremadura. With the persistent lack of rainfall and the reservoirs only at 27% of capacity, an official drought was declared on November 2. The restrictions will affect 554 municipalities throughout the three regions and aim to save a large quantity of water by prohibiting the watering of gardens and the cleaning of streets, among other measures.

Historically, October is a month that sees a lot of rain, but this year, only 10.2 litres per square metre has been collected by the Almonte station in Huelva. In addition, the largest lagoon in the Doñana National Park, Santa Olalla, which previously covered 45 hectares, last week only covered 0.6.

According to the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation, nearby strawberry farmers have been illegally draining the area of water to irrigate their crops, and native flora and fauna are struggling to survive in the now-parched 57,679 square kilometres that the basin covers.

The basin of the Guadalquivir river is the third-largest in Spain by capacity of reservoirs, although today they only contain 2,187 cubic hectometres of water while they can store 8,115. With no heavy rainfall on the horizon, the Government plans to introduce the restrictions for the first time since 2008.

The plan is to cut water supplies to irrigators by 50% with the affected municipalities expected to have emergency plans in place to conserve the vital element.

According to Carmen Díaz, researcher at the Department of Wetland Ecology of the Doñana Biological Station, the National Park once had hundreds of lagoons that simply don’t exist today. Aquatic species have been lost never to return, with the expert estimating that only half of the marine creatures present in Doñana still exist today.

“There are species that simply need to drink, and in summer there are no water points for mammals or the birds,” she said.

The landscape of the Guadalquivir basin has been transformed beyond all recognition in the last decade: where olive trees used to flourish or flounder depending on the rains, new intensive olive and almond plantations have sprung up that drink from the enormous flow that crosses Andaluc'ia. The imminent declaration of drought will now mean cutting the water supply to 400 cubic hectometres of land in order to guarantee supply to residents until 2024.

Image: Archive

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