Second desalination plant for Malaga's Axarquía area still on the cards

The Junta de Andalucía is still processing the application for a private facility despite the state government's commitment to fund a public one

Eugenio Cabezas

Axarquía

Monday, 24 March 2025, 22:23

The Andalusian regional government has announced that it is still considering plans for a private desalination plant for the Axarquía area of Malaga province.

Although the recent rains have been a real lifeline for the province, with its reservoirs at over 54 per cent of their capacity, the Junta de Andalucía and the provincial authority, the Diputación de Málaga, still have a large number of projects in the pipeline that would ease a future drought situation.

One of the most important projects on this list is the Axarquía desalination plant. After the regional government initiated an administrative procedure in the summer of 2022 to enable the construction of a privately promoted facility, the following year, in May 2023, Spain' central government committed to building a public one with an investment of 100 million euros, to be returned by the users through water bills within a period of time yet to be determined.

In the Junta's official bulletin (BOJA) of 18 March, an announcement appeared of the agreement of 11 March 2025, of the application made by Mediterráneo Desalación S.L. for the contract of public domain for the installation of seawater desalination (IDAM) in Vélez-Málaga.

Public desalination plant

The desalination plant proposed by Magtel after analysing up to a dozen possible locations would be next to the Vélez-Málaga treatment plant, south of the motorway and west of the El Ingenio shopping centre, on land far enough away from residential areas but also close to the mouth of the Vélez river. With an investment of around 120 million euros plus IVA sales tax, the plant is designed for an initial capacity of 40 million cubic metres.

However, according to the technical documentation, to which SUR has had access and which is now subject to the public information procedure, a future expansion is contemplated up to 60 in case of need, of which 10 would be used for urban supply and the remaining 30 for irrigation. Moreover, production could be adjusted to the needs of the moment, so that the system would be structured in steps of 10 million cubic metres per year.

In principle, the volume reserved for domestic supply would be transported to an existing drinking water reservoir, while for irrigation a solution is proposed that would allow the resources to be incorporated into the system by taking advantage of existing infrastructures, including La Viñuela reservoir. The network would be completed with the necessary offshore inlet conduit to capture the water and drive it to the desalination plant, as well as a parallel outfall to return the water with high saline concentration to the sea. These infrastructures would be located in the area around the mouth of the Vélez river.

The Minister of Agriculture, Ramón Fernández-Pacheco, said during a visit to Vélez-Málaga in February that "the only project on the table" for the Axarquía is the public desalination plant, the private project is still going through a bureaucratic process. Of the three bids initially submitted, the original proposal, that of Magtel S.L. from Cordoba, through its subsidiary Mediterráneo Desalación S.L., which began the process at the end of 2020, is particularly decisive.

Environmental assessment

Environmental group Gabinete de Estudios de la Naturaleza de la Axarquía (GENA-Ecologistas en Acción) have said that "it is not certain that this second desalination plant will be built".

The application is being processed because, in principle, a project like this cannot be rejected, but whether it is accepted in the end is yet to be decided, because if the State desalination plant, which is financed, is successful, "there is no need for another one", the spokesman for the environmental group, biologist Rafael Yus, told SUR.

He went on to say, "We will study it" and give "the appropriate" feedback but added, " don't think it will prosper, the company is doing it to have a privileged position in case a second desalination plant is needed. The public desalination plant at the Río Seco has not yet undergone its environmental assessment, and until it is published we cannot say anything".

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