Estepona becomes first municipality in Andalucía to have remote water metering in all households
The local water company Hidralia guarantees 100% water supply and quality this summer in all the municipalities it manages
Emma Pérez-Romera
Estepona
Tuesday, 8 July 2025, 15:59
"Estepona will be the first municipality in Andalucía to have remote water metering installed in 100% of the households, which means that as citizens we will have control over our water consumption, water savings and potential leak detection, among many other things," said Fulgencio Díaz Madrid - executive director of Hidralia, the company responsible for water management in the town.
According to Díaz, the digitalisation of water services is key to societies' well-being. "Our day to day is linked to a digitalisation that allows us to manage water efficiently, transparently, without compromising the environment, putting the focus on people and making the most of the water that nature gives us."
The digitalisation of the 30,000 homes in Estepona, plus those under construction, has been "a priority and almost a personal objective" for Hidralia, which aims to guarantee responsible water consumption and avoid wasting as much water as possible in the event of leaks or breakdowns in the network. In addition, the population's health and 100% water quality are the main priority, as Díaz explained.
In Estepona in particular, more than 4,100 water samples are analysed every year, an average of 11.5 times a day. "We study parameters such as chlorine, calcium, fluorine, bromine, bromate, chlorate, radioactivity, tridiums - the whole spectrum of simple compounds and also the microbiological part and other more complex compounds such as insecticides, fluorochlorinated compounds, detergents, oils," said Díaz. In addition to the 18 disinfection sectors, Estepona has the only trihalomethane sensor on the Costa del Sol.
No restrictions
There are no restrictions on water usage in Estepona this summer, but the pressure drops at night. "The water pressure is usually regulated so that sufficient water reaches showers and heaters, but what we are not going to do is make our infrastructure system suffer," said Díaz.
Thanks to the rains of the past two seasons, Hidralia guarantees enough water supply in the coming months. "We come from two years of Covid-19 and two years of drought; we need to recover life as normal in order to have a good tourist season," said the director of Hidralia, highlighting the importance of the tourism sector in Andalucía.
Díaz is committed to drawing up an emergency plan for future periods of drought. "We have to expand water production together with the Junta, the Mancomunidad and the municipalities, with which we are already working on learning from experience, creating new infrastructure and minimising the impact of the drought in the coming years with desalination plants, such as the one in Estepona," he stated.
Future challenges
For Hidralia, the next challenge is to turn the water cycle around without ever compromising the environment. "Today we take the water, we use it once, it goes to the sanitation and then to the treatment plant and I think that water could have a more advanced treatment to irrigate gardens. I don't even think that the drought will lead us to that, but we have the technology to re-drink the water that we have previously used."
Díaz also believes in the potential of renewables and the optimisation of natural resources when it comes to managing water services.
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