The water drops at full speed while it ends garages, basements and storage rooms. A pipe has broken. From the tens of dozens of houses there is not a drop. And the public company that manages water in the Community of Madrid, ends up having to send hundreds of carafes to put out the thirst and calm the nerves of the affected neighbors. It passes on July 3, and in the heart of the capital of Spain. The breakdown, qualified as “fortuitous”, is resolved within a few hours. But the brief wound that opens explains an intervention of an unprecedented geographical magnitude and concentration in the centennial history of the company: the channel prepares almost 130 million euros to change 210 kilometers of pipes that it considers “out of norm” in Madrid Ciudad. Thus, the equivalent in pipes at the distance that Madrid separates from Valladolid will be renewed. It will take about 57 months. That is, there will be works until 2030. A gigantic project that will add more tits to the chaos that will cause the numerous works planned in the main roads of the capital for the coming months.
“There are many breaks throughout Madrid, they are constant,” says Alejandro Sánchez, deputy of Equo assigned to the most Madrid parliamentary group in the Regional Assembly. “The channel can be blamed that it goes behind the mishaps, but it is true that the losses have reduced a lot [de agua] on the network, and that this investment is part of a renewal plan to avoid leaks and breaks that happen throughout Madrid. ”
On July 17 there was one in the M-30 that caused a kilometer jam. On July 3, another on López de Hoyos street flooded bass and garages. And in preceding weeks they accumulated in Aluche, La Castellana, Ríos Rosas … They are specific incidents of a network with more than 14,000 kilometers of pipes throughout the community, but that tense the day to day of the city by affecting rolled traffic; Place the affected neighbors before the uncertainty of not knowing when they will be able to drink water from their taps, or shower; and point out the need to renew key facilities.
“The breakage of those pipes that are out of norm, even the norm of the channel, puts the security, even life, of the workers who are doing maintenance in the galleries,” criticizes Diego Cruz, deputy of the PSOE in the Madrid Assembly. “Employing its conditioning, although it is done with a scandalous delay, is something we greet and that we know is an old vindication of the union centrals present on the channel,” he adds. “We demand from the Isabel II channel that instead of investing unfairly and misfortune outside the Community of Madrid [en referencia a la expansión americana] It acts throughout the region also on what the citizen does not see, as are the galleries, a fundamental and long forgotten infrastructure. ”
What is going to be done to alleviate the problem? The regional government does not clarify why the pipes that will be replaced are considered “out of norm”, as explicit in. Yes it specifies that your change is part of the network plan to replace “more obsolete” water channels with others that “present greater resistance” being, for example, of alloyed iron with graphite.
“That minimizes the probability that breaks occur,” details a spokesman, who also emphasizes that the channel loses less than 5% circulating water, which makes it the most effective company in Spain in the use of the liquid, according to the data of the National Institute of Statistics (INE). (163 municipalities). And now he focuses specifically in the capital coinciding with a moment of deep transformation.
For the first time in the last decade, the channel. He has also received. And it is accelerating the.
All with an objective: finance the investment of 2,000 million in improvements in the network and the service that includes its strategic plan for the sexennium 2025-2030, with which you must prepare the supply network so that it adapts to a region that has already exceeded the, and in which the effects of climate change can reduce drastically water reserves.
“Within the strategic plan of Canal de Isabel II 2025-2030, line 1 is framed, focused on guaranteeing water supply in climate change scenarios and population growth,” reads the contract. “Within this line, there is the Red Plan, whose objective is to renew 100% of the conduits that are out of norm, ensuring the continuity of the service by reducing the probability of failures in the network, while guaranteeing the quality of the water supplied,” he follows. And it is admitted: “An important part of the pipeline outside the Canal de Isabel II is located in the city of Madrid, where the management of licenses and permits is strongly conditioned by the protection of pavements, the affections to mobility, the interference with the urban transport lines, the blockages of districts and all those conditions that arise in an eminently urban work.”
What is certain is that the works, which will be extended for 57 months, will affect all the districts of the capital, and will predictably start at the end of 2025 or beginning of 2026, they can end up further complicating mobility in a city than on the return of the holidays will encounter important construction works. Among them include, for example, those of the excavation of the Soterramiento tunnels of the A-5, the closure of the central lane at the height of the towers for the Castilian park, the construction of a platform in the M-30 at the sales height, the cut of the A-3 in its access to Madrid for the works of the future Count of Casal exchanger or the expansion of the line 11 of Metro.
