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Malaga city council is moving fast on the plan to integrate the Guadalmedina riverbed more into the urban landscape surrounding it. This is despite the fact that the urban planning dossier that supports it still has several years of processing ahead of it before final approval. Currently it is still in the preliminary phase of environmental assessment. So, this Thursday the council got busy with contracting, through municipal company Promálaga, the preliminary project for the work in which Malaga's mayor, Francisco de la Torre, has the greatest interest.
The work in question will involve the building of a partial embankment of some 350 metres between the Armiñán and Aurora bridges to create a large square (plaza) connecting the Centro and Trinidad districts. These 'plaza-bridges' are designed for the Santo Domingo area and traffic will disappear underneath these to pass alongside the riverbed.
In the contract for the preliminary design of this work, valued at 339,923 euros, the technical reports carried out by Emasa (Malaga's municipal water company) are attached to check whether they are technically feasible. The conclusions of this technical assessment show a favourable result for work to go ahead provided that a series of prior adaptations of the riverbed are carried out to ensure that it can accommodate the maximum river flow calculated by the latest reports from the Junta. That maximum flow is put at 460 cubic metres per second for the final section of the Guadalmedina where the Los Ángeles stream joins the river right down to the river mouth.
Therefore, Emasa, on the basis of the study carried out by consultants from Narval, has set out a series of "hydraulic conditions [control of river flow] that must be implemented in the riverbed so that, while maintaining the discharge capacity for the flows approved by the Junta, the 'plaza-bridges' planned by the municipal planning department (Urbanismo) can be implemented", according to a document from Emasa itself.
Prior to the construction of these covered sections to the river, a "regularisation of the longitudinal profile of the river bed" has to be carried out from upstream of the Armiñán bridge, before the language school (where a new hydraulic jump (a flood control structure that reduces water flow velocity, the most common being an under-shot weir or gate) with a dissipating basin of 1.87 metres in height has to be created), to downstream of the Aurora bridge (where another jump of 2.22 metres in height has to be placed).
From the first hydraulic jump and the one that currently exists to the south of Armiñán bridge, a riverbed slope of 0.47% must be maintained, which implies some excavation of the central portion of the riverbed. The Emasa report also states that "it is necessary to underpin the foundations of Armiñán bridge or build a new bridge, taking advantage of the widening of the bridge's span as provided for in the Guadalmedina Plan." In this regard, readers are reminded that it is already planned within the Martiricos redevelopment project to extend Armiñán bridge, at the height of La Goleta, with a new, wider span that would allow new roads to be laid out to improve traffic in the area and create a new square at the junction of Paseo de Martiricos and Avenida del Arroyo de los Ángeles.
South of Armiñán bridge, the riverbed would also have to be modified to increase its gradient to 0.47% up to downstream of Aurora bridge. It is in this section where the city council is contemplating a 350-metre embankment that, according to the study carried out by Narval, could be feasible. One of the premises established by Urbanismo is that the lower level of the river's new covered section here "must maintain a buffer of at least one metre with the water surface resulting from the proposed modification of the riverbed at the most unfavourable point." Likewise, Urbanismo has reminded everyone that the upper level of the 'plaza-bridge' and the embankment between Centro and Trinidad "must not exceed the current street level by more than one metre" in order to "maintain visual contact" and favour "integration between both river banks."
According to the test results obtained by Narval, it is possible to meet the condition that there should always be at least one metre of safety margin under the proposed 'plaza-bridge' here in the case of the highest likely water levels, even if two pillars of a maximum thickness of 80 centimetres were to be introduced to support these new 'plaza-bridges'.
However, the data provided by the simulations are somewhat varied. Thus, in the case of the embankment between the Aurora and Armiñán bridges, there would be a 1.2 metre clearance in the most unfavourable section, the southernmost part. However, this free space would exceed three metres in the rest of the covering.
At the next 'bridge-plaza', at the top end of Calle Cisneros, there is a safety buffer of only 1 metre with lower pillars to support it and 1.5 metres without these supports. Next, in the one planned for up by the church of Santo Domingo, the free space with respect to the maximum water level would vary between 1.2 metres with pillars and 1.5 metres without supporting pillars.
However, in no case will it go below the one metre margin set as a target by Malaga council, whose studies also suggest that trees or bushes should not be placed in the riverbed to improve the flow of water, that the remaining pillars of the old Tetuán bridge should be removed and that "fountains and current ornamental elements" should also be removed, as well as "stairs or ramps that invade the current walls vertically."
Under these conditions an external team of technicians will have to draw up a preliminary project for all these actions and revise their budget, which is currently estimated at almost 100million euros, 97.2 million to be precise if the amounts foreseen in the plan drawn up by Urbanismo are added up. Of this figure, the most expensive interventions are the tunnelling required between Centro and Trinidad (27.4 million euros) and moving the traffic flow underneath the 'plaza-bridges' on the eastern bank of the river, between Calle Martínez Barrionuevo and Tetuán bridge (33 million euros).
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