Faced with the drought that is affecting the entire country, administrations and experts are urging the adaptation of water consumption and management, limiting waste and abuse in uses, responsible for the drying up of some rivers or other natural enclaves.
Several communities have announced measures and the implementation of plans to alleviate the situation, but Ecologistas en Acción denounces the permissiveness of the Community of Madrid with the thirty golf courses spread throughout the region, which have not facilitated water consumption since 2003 .
According to this organization, in the Community of Madrid there are 31 golf courses that consume, in a downward estimate, 8.6 cubic hectometres of water, that is, a volume of water that is between what cities of 130,000 consume. -170,000 inhabitants, like Parla or Alcorcón. An abusive situation, denounce environmentalists.
Ecologists in Action points out that, despite the numerous transparency legislation that obliges administrations to report data and information of public interest, "it is not easy to know the volume of treated water, drinking water or groundwater that it is used to irrigate the numerous golf courses that are still active in the Region”.
In fact, in 2003 and in 2008, the regional office denied this information at the request of the Ombudsman. Recently, the Council for Transparency and Participation of the Community of Madrid, dependent on the Madrid Assembly, has warned Canal de Isabel II that it must provide data on the water consumption it supplies to these leisure facilities.
According to the ecologists, in a new maneuver to circumvent this delivery of this data, the public entity, dependent on the Ministry of the Environment, has filed a contentious-administrative appeal before the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid against the resolution of the Transparency Council .
In this way, "the obligation to provide the data is suspended, until there is a sentence": "The Canal de Isabel II will continue to hide relevant and timely data from public knowledge such as the volume of water destined to irrigate the plots of the golf courses”, denounces Ecologistas en Acción.
In the past, the golf courses of the Community of Madrid have been the subject of complaints for illegal connections to the aquifers. Many of them claim to irrigate with treated water (the volumes of which are not provided), but the deficient quality of the purification practiced by many WWTPs of the Canal de Isabel II has already created problems due to the use of this water in irrigation, in the form of pests or bad smells, which is why some facilities have been penalized for using groundwater irregularly.
