The Investigating Court number 1 of the Malaga town of Vélez-Málaga has opened legal proceedings in which more than a hundred people are being investigated for allegedly irregular water management through clandestine wells and illegal irrigation in the area of ​​the Malaga Axarquia.
The investigation began as a result of a complaint from Seprona of the Civil Guard and the Environment Prosecutor’s Office and the investigating court has issued a communication in which it asks Seprona to tell all those involved to stop extracting water until it is verify the legality of these shots, according to judicial sources.
The investigation has as its epicenter a series of subtropical plantations in the AxarquÃa and the Civil Guard has already begun to take statements from around twenty people as detainees who are subsequently being released under the warning that they will be summoned to testify before the investigative court.
The agents are trying to identify a hundred people, although other judicial sources have specified that those investigated will foreseeably be many fewer for crimes against natural resources and the environment, as well as water diversion.
The Civil Guard has confirmed that there is an operation against the illegal use of water but they have not specified the exact number of people investigated because the case is still open.
Diario Sur, which has advanced the news, indicates that the clandestine extraction of more than one million cubic meters of a mass of underground water has been detected through three illegal wells that have been operating for years.
The second infraction investigated by Seprona refers to the diversion of water managed by various irrigation communities, which administer this resource to a series of authorized parcels.
The Minister of Sustainability, Environment and Blue Economy, Ramón Fernández-Pacheco, has been “absolutely against the illegal extraction of groundwater that depletes our aquifers” and has expressed “the most absolute condemnation” by the Andalusian Government ” to anyone who breaks the law”.
Questioned by journalists for said investigation, Fernández-Pacheco has said that “it is a police action that is still in progress” and has supported the work of the Civil Guard.
“From the Autonomous Administration we are inflexible against any type of crime and, in a very special way, against environmental crimes”, pointed out the counselor during the visit to the works of the port of Caleta de Vélez.
