Junta submits key Gibralmedina reservoir project to central government and anxiously awaits next steps

It will be a long and complex road. Any major public work involves an endless stream of paperwork, even more so for a new reservoir because it always generates divided opinions. Malaga awaits progress on the Gibralmedina reservoir, which will regulate a key river in the province, the Guadiaro. Such a reservoir will serve as a more than considerable strengthening of the water supplies available to the Costa del Sol. The Junta de Andalucía, promoter of this major construction project, has now submitted the technical report to central government.

As to the formal submission of the paperwork, regional government sources assure SUR that delivery was acknowledged as received by the directorate-general for water with the Ministry of Ecological Transition. "We await and demand the start of its processing," they added. The cost does not bode well for a straightforward agreement: the projected investment amounts to some 780 million euros.

The future reservoir would be located between the provinces of Malaga and Cadiz. The Junta's agriculture department finished overseeing the scoping of the projects and technical report in spring and presented them to local mayors and other interested parties before transferring the completed document to the Spanish government to negotiate all the financing and start the formal process of approval.

The aim is to regulate the Guadiaro river that, while it does flow into the Campo de Gibraltar basin in Cadiz province, most of this river actually courses through Malaga province and so the flood zone for the future dam would also be within Malaga's borders. The most important factor for the Costa del Sol province is that water will flow from the future reservoir back into Malaga.

In reality, there are two projects. The first is creating the dam itself at an estimated cost of 400 million euros. The second involves installing the supply pipelines running from Cadiz province to the Costa del Sol, budgeted at around 200 million euros. The technical report on both has exceeded 437,000 euros, 19.20% more than the initial amount to cover drafting the work.

In 2020, the regional government's department of agriculture awarded the contract to draft the project for the new reservoir, which will be located on the Gibralmedina stream, a tributary of the Guadiaro. It would join the Guadarranque dams, on the river of the same name, and the Charco Redondo dam, which uses the outflow from the Palmones river. It was primarily intended to supply urban and industrial water requirements of a population of 500,000 inhabitants in the Campo de Gibraltar and for land irrigation for agricultural purposes.

Typsa-Inproes-Gibralmedina, the joint venture of companies that drafted the project, initially considered the option of using raw water (up to 15 million cubic metres per year) to be treated by Acosol (the western Costa del Sol's public water company). However, the chosen alternative consists of connecting the Gibralmedina dams with the Guadarranque. The water will be treated instead by Arcgisa (the public water company of Campo de Gibraltar) at the Arenillas DWTP (drinking water treatment plant) in Cadiz. From there it will be transported to the reservoir in San Enrique de Guadiaro, then from that reservoir to Acosol's western branch.

This proposal would create a proper drinking-water mains supply between Cadiz and Malaga, with key elements such as the pending extension of the Verde water treatment plant in Marbella and the now-in-service pumping stations in Rojas (Churriana) and La Rosaleda. This would enable a continuous connection between the Campo de Gibraltar and the Axarquía area. All these projects are being undertaken by the Junta.

The Gibralmedina project replaces the previously proposed project to expand La Concepción reservoir, located between Marbella and Istán, which was included in Spain's national hydrological plan. Its 57 million cubic metres of capacity are exceeded in times of heavy rainfall such as those recorded during last autumn's and winter's storm surges and floods. In fact, it could have been filled twice with all the rain it collected. So, once again, the reservoir had to be syphoned off for safety reasons. That preliminary project was completed in 2016 and envisaged increasing the reservoir capacity to 100.5 million cubic metres. There were two options: build another dam in front of the current one or to raise the height of the existing one.