However difficult the weather has been, the one good thing about so much rain is the security of water supply that it provides, after so much drought. In fact, according to Sur, five of the province’s seven reservoirs are now discharging water as they are close to overflowing.
Most reservoirs have an official safety margin, somewhere between 80% and 90%, above which water needs to be released.
“Only a year and a half ago, Malaga province had just over 100 million cubic metres of reserves. This week it was on its way to having 500 million cubic metres”, says Sur. The seven reservoirs across the province are now up around 80% capacity, compared with 45% last November.
The biggest reservoir in Andalucia, Embalse de Iznajar, exceeds the total capacity across all of Malaga province, with its volume when full of 920 hm3 (cubic hectormeters, so 100mx100mx100m), compared with Malaga’s total full volume of some 616 hm3. At the beginning of this month, Iznajar was 32% full with 297 hm3. Today it stands at 483 hm3, some 52% full, 20% gained in the last 9 days, as the red line in the graph above shows. As yet, like Viñuela, the largest reservoir in Malaga province, Iznajar is nowhere near its safety margin.
Read the article in Sur here.