This is what drought looks like

This is what drought looks like.

Spain is currently going through a water crisis, with reservoirs drying up all over the country. It’s been on the news a lot this autumn.

Sometimes you see stuff on the news and you just go back to your business and you try not to think too much about it. Like you do with wars and the other stuff that our politicians mess up – the Dakota oil spill being a prime example.

But if you look around you can see local examples of things going very wrong.

Last weekend we went to Ezcaray, a small town in La Rioja that lives off tourism – especially skiing in winter. The skiing hasn’t opened yet. It might not open for very much this year, nor for very long in the future.

There is a little snow on the hills, but with the warm weather that we are still having in November, it is probably melting. Not that you can notice it downhill.

This is the river. It’s more like a dry canyon from somewhere down in the south, like Almeria, than a mountain river in the north.

 

When you search Ezcaray in google maps, this is the photo that pops up.

https://plus.google.com/photos/photo/100661991213780414719/6429638250127263666

It’s kind of different to the one up the top of this page. Or the following one.

 

We were told that this is usually a waterfall. It has a fish ladder, which you can see under the cage on the left, for all the use that can be made of it this year. There are no fish in evidence in that pool, the only drop of water visible in a hundred metres. Directly upstream it’s completely dry. Just a few drops seep through the rocks. A few hundred metres upstream we saw a few small rivulets coming through the stones. But there can be little life there – not even mayfly or caddis fly – to sustain a river ecosystem.

 

The local council wants to put a dam upstream, we heard. The locals are fighting to save their river. A sign hung in a village said, “Water is life, save the river Oca.” I wonder if keeping the construction at bay will be enough to save it.