Third Malaga village advises residents not to drink tap water

Totalán has become the third municipality in Malaga province's Axarquía area to declare its tap water undrinkable after the town hall detected high levels of chlorates in its supply. It is distributing free bottled water to the villages's 800 residents through local businesses. In mid-November Iznate was the first place in the Axarquía to declare its water unfit for human consumption, followed by El Borge the following week.

In an official announcement dated Tuesday 2 December, the town hall stated that although the water should not be used for drinking or cooking, it can be used for personal hygiene, cleaning and irrigation. While awaiting a second analysis to confirm that the supply has returned to normal, residents can collect bottles of water from “Tienda de María”, among other places.

The mayor, Miguel Ángel Escaño, has asked for "understanding and cooperation" while work is carried out to correct the anomaly and restore drinking water as soon as possible. The town hall has guaranteed that residents will have access to bottled water, which they can collect free of charge from shops in the village after collecting vouchers from the town hall. Each household will receive eight litres of water per day and water will also be provided to bars for coffee machines and food preparation, as well as to the school and nursery.

According to the mayor, the incident could last "at least a couple of weeks’, bearing in mind that once all the possible factors causing the appearance of chlorates have been addressed, three consecutive analyses must be carried out every 24 hours and the results must be favourable.

Technical sources consulted by SUR have pointed out that high levels of chlorates can be increased by poor maintenance of water supply tanks. However, they have clarified that the maximum parameters set by the regulations have recently been modified by the Andalusian regional government, increasing them, which is complicating the management of municipal supply networks in Andalucía.

"The water is not contaminated, it is safe, but when this determination was incorporated into the analysis, levels above the recommended value appeared," explained the mayor of Totalán. The action plan to resolve the problem consists, among other things, of checking the traceability of the chlorine, as it can deteriorate and degrade into chlorate, cleaning the pipes in case limescale has accumulated in them, recirculating the water and checking the chlorate content of the water coming from the La Viñuela reservoir, which supplies the municipal network.

"There are places where the problem has been caused by a lack of cleaning of the tanks, but that is not the case here because there is a report from months ago confirming that the cleaning was done,’ said Escaño, who also commented that fresh chlorine, freshly packaged from the factory, will be used in case the deterioration of this product is the cause.

The president of the Mancomunidad association of town halls on the eastern Costa del Sol-Axarquía and of the public water company Axaragua, Jorge Martín, explained to SUR that, for the moment, they have no evidence that any other municipalities are affected by this problem. "The problem affects all those who do not maintain their facilities and chlorine storage properly," he said. In Iznate, the test results are now positive and the water is drinkable throughout the municipality, following the cleaning of the two municipal reservoirs.

Axaragua has a draft project in place to remodel and improve the El Trapiche drinking water treatment plant, which will enable it to adapt more safely to the new health requirements established in current regulations. The president of Axaragua thanked "the residents of the affected municipalities for their understanding and for the work being done by the local councils and Axaragua technicians to resolve the incident and provide the best drinking water supply service".