Malaga Flood Risk: four dams started releasing water in anticipation of storm Leonardo
A total of 50 Andalusian reservoirs are currently releasing water, with La Concepción in Marbella maintaining levels well below the safety threshold as a precaution
A total of 50 dams in Andalucía and four in Malaga province have been releasing water since before storm Leonardo arrived on Tuesday night.
Such actions are crucial in anticipation of flood risks and given the alerts for heavy rainfall that the state meteorological agency has activated.
The dams in Malaga province in question are: La Concepción, Casasola, Limonero and Conde de Guadalhorce. The accumulated rainfall since December would have overflowed these reservoirs if water management had not taken action.
Engineers from the regional ministry of agriculture have informed SUR that reservoir data is subject to updates at least three times a day. Decisions can change depending on the situation.
Operating rules
The case of the La Concepción reservoir in Marbella is a good example of how safety thresholds work. Currently, it has four million cubic metres of empty space left as a buffer. The reservoir has a capacity of 57 million cubic metres, but the maximum safety level in winter and in times of heavy rainfall is 48. This week, its management released enough water to get the level to 44 million cubic metres as a preventative measure.
The Conde de Guadalhorce has also been draining for several days and is at 82% of its full capacity. It has three million cubic metres less than last week.
The other two reservoirs in the system - Guadalhorce and Guadalteba - have sufficient flood abatement capacity. For the moment, those two and La Viñela do not need to release water.
The two 'safety' dams in the province, Casasola (Campanillas river) and Limonero (Guadalmedina), have a large margin because their operating rules set very low filling thresholds. In both cases, sluice gates have been opened and closed according to technical parameters. In the afternoon, the Limonero stored just under 14 million cubic metres, at 98% of its capacity. This figure may be misleading, given that the effective capacity exceeds 21.
Despite the releases in recent weeks, the volume stored in the province exceeds 403 million cubic metres.
As far as watercourses are concerned, practically all of them are flowing with significant volumes.
Experts are expecting problems and incidents in the basins of the Guadiaro, Genal, Estepona-Marbella (Velerín, Padrón, Guadaiza, Guadalmansa, Guadaiza) and, to a lesser extent, in the Sierra de las Nieves (the Grande river). If the tributaries of the Guadalhorce carry a lot of water, there could be problems in the long term in places such as Cártama, although the probability is low for the moment.
