Spain Cracking Under Pressures Of Drought - Ag Losses $2 Billion So Far

[hatrack]

MADRID — Spain is suffering its worst drought in more than half a century. Rivers are withering, vital crops have been scorched to death, and drinking water is being rationed just as the country hits its peak tourist season. Fatal forest fires have raced through thousands of parched acres, and a heat wave in much of southern Europe has put hospitals and emergency-care workers on alert. With poor water management the norm, the crisis is only going to worsen, experts and officials warn.

"It is very probable that next year will also be a dry year," Environment Minister Cristina Narbona said. "A new drought cycle could be starting." Agricultural losses have been put at nearly $2 billion, at least a quarter of that in the southern Andalusia region, where Spain's olive groves are starting to suffer the same devastation that has so far caused the loss of tons of wheat, barley, sugar beets and other vegetables.

Cows and sheep are also threatened, farm unions say, as are wild animals. Flamingos, storks, boars and the endangered Iberian lynx in Spain's Donana and other national parks are said to be suffering from serious dehydration, which could interfere with their reproductive and migratory habits. Portugal and parts of France and Italy also have been hit by drought this season. But the problems in Spain, which has one of the highest per capita water consumption rates in Europe, are compounded by a construction boom and big-business agriculture that Narbona and others say irrigates inefficiently.

Sprawling apartment complexes, fancy resorts and water-guzzling golf courses are sprouting along Spain's arid southern coastlines at a frantic pace. A record 700,000 homes were reportedly built last year, and with them, thousands of illegal wells. The crisis is chronic; southern, Mediterranean Spain has been parched for centuries. But demand has soared during Spain's rapid growth of the last couple of decades and the modernization of its economy, said Jose Antonio Sotelo, a scientist with the Institute of Environmental Sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid. This winter registered the lowest rainfall since 1947, when records were first kept, the Spanish National Meteorological Institute says. In the driest parts, such as Andalusia and the rural western region of Extremadura, rainfall was less than half of normal.


EDIT

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-drought8aug08,1,3265702.story?coll=la-news-a_section

[phantom power]

1. Is there any sport worse for the environment than golf?

Maybe I'm just prejudiced. I never understood the appeal of golf.