First victory of water warriors in Coín

The organisation Mesa de Agua, which has been campaigning against the project to build the enormous proposed leisure park on the outskirts of Coín in the Guadalhorce Valley with a watersports complex, is celebrating a victory today.

Through fear of the already near-exhausted aquifer being completely overexploited by the project and leaving families and smallholders without water for themselves, the campaign has fought hard over the last two years to protect their water with banners reading ‘no con mi agua’ and following legal channels to halt the misuse of water in the already drought-stricken zone.

On Friday, April 11, the Junta de Andalucía ruled that the Transcendence project does not have sufficient water to carry out its project and therefore will not concede water from the municipality to be used for leisure in the area. Five technicians from the Junta have given a resounding ‘no’ to conceding water to the plan on the land it has been designed to go.

The regional government, in a report to be released shortly, has stated that it will not be allowing the project to proceed either now or within the next two years. The report also states that the government accepts the fact that the zone has a high level of contamination risk due to its permeability.

Mesa de Agua claims that there isn’t enough water to meet the needs of the population. The Transcendence Project wants to extract an additional 200,000 cubic meters. The campaign is not over yet, and they urge people to join them.