Malaga province now has water for two years but major supply projects are still pending

Ignacio Lillo / Chus Heredia

Malaga

Monday, 17 March 2025, 13:29

From planning (and executing) emergency work to ship in water by boat, to having to open the floodgates of La Concepción and Conde de Guadalhorce reservoirs to shed excess water. Such is the radical change in the water scenario in Malaga province, caused first by two consecutive droughts, and then by a consecutive trail of Atlantic storms that have irrigated the province from one end to the other.

To date, Malaga's reservoirs are well on the way to accumulating 300 million cubic metres, which is half the capacity available across the five storage reservoirs and the two flood abatement reservoirs located around the province.

As if that were not enough, the rains have been quite distributed, for a change. So, the available flow into La Viñuela reservoir, now almost 60 million cubic metres (41% of its capacity) will allow the Axarquía area to emerge from the situation of severe shortage. There is water for almost three years of supply for household use, but irrigation is still at the mercy of what will be decided at the next meeting of the Junta's drought committee, scheduled for the end of this month.

La Concepción reservoir, which supplies the Costa del Sol, is now expelling large quantities of water, due both to the heavy rains and its low capacity and also the lack of the much-announced "water highway" (the planned interconnection between water-collection points that could take advantage of some of the overflows). In any case, as soon as it is safe, it will be at 100% to face the summer and the final stretch of the year. That said, the Costa del Sol will still have to continue using the desalination plant, as this area consumes 90 million cubic metres per year.

Malaga city has particularly benefited from the rainfall, especially after the Jana and Konrad storms last week. The three reservoirs of the Guadalhorce, which directly supply the city, together with Casasola and El Limonero reservoirs, now have more than 183 million cubic metres of water. This is more than enough water to guarantee supply for the next three years.

There is no doubt that the water situation is much better than in previous years. At this time last year, there was almost three times less water than there is now. Nevertheless, we cannot let our guard down because the situation is still far from optimal. Firstly because, in reality, while the level of available water resources has provided some respite, it is still not even the highest so far this decade. The most recent benchmark, which is unlikely to be reached this 2025, is March 2021 when Malaga's reservoirs contained 366 million cubic metres.

Secondly, and above all, because the infrastructure work necessary to guarantee supply in any upcoming rounds of drought conditions is still pending. The two desalination plants fall into this category: a new one for the western Costa del Sol and, most urgently, the one in La Axarquía, which Acuamed must undertake and which will be the safeguard for the subtropical agriculture and human consumption to the east of Malaga.

Moreover, we must also continue to improve the use of recycled water from treatment plants for irrigation and cleaning. Progress must be made on the Gibralmedina reservoir that will take water from the Guadiaro river, and work on the Cerro Blanco dam must be taken up again to take advantage of any flooding to the Río Grande. "Andalucía does not have enough reservoirs, we cannot give up on new reservoirs" in Malaga and Cadiz provinces, said regional minister for agriculture Ramón Fernández-Pacheco.

Prospects are good, largely because of two projects nearing completion. The first is the improvement work to increase the production capacity at the Marbella desalination plant. The work is expected to be completed by the end of this month and will mean that the plant will have the capacity to produce 20 million cubic metres of desalinated seawater per year. The Junta de Andalucía and Acosol have invested more than seven million euros over both phases of this project.

The recovery of the Bajo Guadalhorce wells, which could supply up to 900 litres per second to Malaga city, is also nearing completion. This is two thirds of the city's consumption. The Junta and municipal water company Emasa have invested more than 15 million euros in recovering the boreholes and connecting them to the El Atabal facilities. At the same time, all the wells of the Aljaima-Fahala system are now available.