Only eight litres of fresh water for each person is all that the inhabitants of Villanueva de las Torres can expect.

Its Town Hall had to provide a 10,000-litre, bowser (water tanker) to contain an emergency supply for the village around the middle of last month. The water comes from the nearby town of Pedro Martínez.

This came about because the Department of Health and Consumption belonging to the Junta de Andalucía declared that the village’s water supply was not apt for human use as it contained a higher than permitted level of sulphates.

If this makes life difficult for households, imagine the chaos that it causes for businesses such as bars and cafeterias. A standard, commercial coffee machine consumes at least 40 litres of water a day, for example, depending on daily trade.

Although you can’t use what comes out of taps for drinking and cooking, there is no problem for using it to wash and other non-consuming uses. Brushing your teeth with it, as long as you spit it out, is not a problem either, as long as you don’t mind the distinctive smell of the water from the municipal wells.

With this in mind, the Town Hall went round to each household on a Friday leaving large bottles of drinking water to last them until Wednesday the next week. Of course, many residents have gone to local shops and supermarkets to purchase bottled water so that they would not be caught short; better to much than too little.

The Junta de Andalucía explained that this situation has come about because of a lack of rainfall that means pumps are sucking up the dregs, so to speak, where sulphate content concentrates; i.e., virtually undiluted.

Far from being grateful that water is provided, some locals complain that they have to go out and get it from the parked bowser on the outskirts of the village.

The Mayor, Dolores Serrano, says that she has no idea how long this situation will continue but that the bowser will remain in use as long as necessary. In the meantime, the Junta is carrying out periodic checks on the sulphate levels in the wells.

But this town in the Montes Orientales area of the province is not the only one there, as Alamedilla also has the same problem (but with nitrates) and temporary remedy. Neither is it the first time that Villanueva has had this problem; there were shortages in 2016 and 2018.

(News/Noticias: Villanueva de las Torres, Montes Orientales, Granada, Andalucia)