Albox and Olula del Río have drinking water for only “about two months”
The mayors of the villages of Almanzora call for "solidarity" with emergency wells
Time is running out for the municipalities that depend on the Negratín-Almanzora Transfer for drinking water to get a solution to supply their citizens with water suitable for consumption. The urgency is greater than ever after the aforementioned transfer closed the tap weeks ago due to drought.
It is a race against the clock so that quality water continues to reach these two municipalities (totaling almost 20,000 inhabitants) by an alternative route to that of the Negratín-Almanzora until the transfer reservoirs recover to the levels required by law so that the water flows again. The margin is not large. According to the independent mayor of Albox, Francisco Torrecillas, the reserves of the administrators in charge of supplying the water to these two locations have the ability to deliver drinking water for “about two months” at most.
Waiting for the wells
This situation makes the view from these towns (although in the same region there are other minor towns that also share supply problems ) reliant on the use of emergency wells located in the municipality of Alcóntar, in Alto Almanzora .
Torrecillas recalled that "in July" the two municipalities warned "the Delegation of the Government and the Environment the situation we were going to have and expected", before thanking "the speed of the Junta de Andalucía" to apply "the solution they have given "through the use of emergency wells located" in an area that is not over-fished and that the Government has as a reserve for these cases." The Albox mayor has said that the temporary use of these wells "does not influence the aquifers of Baza or Caniles".
For Torrecillas this is the only option to continue distributing drinking water in two towns the size of Albox and Olula del Río. “We have no other possibilities. They are two very large towns where we cannot supply the water with tankers." On the possibility of constructing an alternative pipeline to that of the Negratín to supply the water, he sees this as an unfeasible project in the short term since “Both Olula and Albox are hooked up to the Negratín pipeline” and “to make an infrastructure that joins the emergency wells with the villages is unthinkable in the immediate future. We are saying that in a couple of months we will surely run dry” According to our best forecasts it would be necessary to extract“ nothing more than 200,000 cubic meters”. In the same vein the mayor of Olula del Río, Antonio Martínez Pascual (PP) has expressed himself.
Time is against us
The Olula mayor believes that "we must tell the truth" and asks all those who support this decision and the detractors "to tell the truth, to seriously analyse this problem and above all remember that the word that is sometimes difficult to say is: solidarity".
This call to solidarity not only refers to the supply from Alcóntar to Olula del Río and Albox but Antonio Martínez reminds us that “the other towns of Alto Almanzora are still towns that are covered, and we don't have the infrastructure so we have to have an alternative because, if Negratín fails, we have to have the emergency wells” and to start work on the arrival of “desalinated water”. Both mayors also ask for speed. “Time is running against us because we are using the water that farmers have on the ponds they have throughout the transfer system,” says Francisco Torrecillas, who asks to continue with the project while the Negratín reservoirs “return to normal” .
Emergency wells: The option has already been considered with the PSOE
The problem of supplying quality water for these two populations is not new. In fact, the Negratín already closed in 2017 although the arrival of the rains allowed the situation to not reach the extreme. In any case, the two locations met with the Junta then governed by the PSOE, a formation that has not yet hidden its opposition to the use of these wells.
According to the mayor of Albox, at that time “we negotiated with the Delegation of the Environment this same alternative for the people: to make the emergency wells in the same place” although “they were not done because it started to rain and Negratín recovered”, Torrecillas points out. On the water of the wells, the mayor of Olula del Río stresses that "it will be controlled because it cannot be used for irrigation since the water law prohibits it."
