ECOLOGISTS STEP UP THEIR CAMPAIGN

The Spanish NGO Ecologistas en Acción (Ecologists in Action) went on the offensive last week with the publication of their book on eight areas in Malaga province endangered by urban growth, in which they name the developers responsible. Several of the cases mentioned in the book Paisajes amenazadas de Malaga are already in the courts. -Antequera: The group says the greatest risk here is that the town's General Urban Plan (PGOU) envisages a tripling of the population in the next five years thanks to six new urbanisations, seven golf courses and ten industrial estates. The construction of a planned airport would destroy Herrera lagoon and the streams that feed it. The anticipated growth of Antequera would also adversely affect the nearby towns of Archidona, Villanueva del Rosario and Mollina. -Axarquía: The NGO alleges that the countryside in this area is being eaten up by developers who offer small farmers astronomical prices for their land. Ecologists in Action say 65% of the area has already been urbanised and all the PGOUs of the costal towns will cement over the few green spaces left. -Malaga Hills: The biggest threat here is the Las Pedrazas highway because 24 kilometres of it will eliminate this natural barrier against floods. The NGO says the 30,000 dwellings planned in Puerto de la Torre will wreak similar damage before the highway is even built. -Sierra de la Utrera: Two quarries have been working illegally for the past 30 years in the area which is already damaged by the "biggest urban nightmare" along the coast - the Doña Julia project consisting of 6,400 houses and three golf courses on 500 hectares of land near Casares. -Coín: The NGO notes that residents' protests have blocked the Rio Grande project but denounce plan to build the Los Llanos de Matagallar urbanisation and a golf course above the aquifer that supplies the town. -Ronda: The NGO says the controversial Los Merinos urbanisation consisting of two hotels, golf courses and nearly a thousand houses on land that is part of the Sierra de las Nieves Biosphere Reserve. It notes that an illegal Formula 1 circuit has already been built. -Valle del Genal: The NGO warns that plans to pipe water from the Genal river to the coast will adversely affect the 15 towns in the area that it currently supplies. It also denounces plans to urbanise a cork tree forest near the river although it notes that none of these development plans are underway yet. -Sierra de Mijas and Alh. el Grande: Apart from the quarries which the NGO has denounced in the past, there are plans to build six golf courses and 71,000 houses on the Mijas plain (vega) and 1,500 houses and two golf courses in Barranco Blanco, a relatively untouched valley where people still hunt the wild boars.