Por Pablo Arranz 
The Urban Planning Commission of the Alicante City Council has given the green light to the punctual modification number 45 of the Municipal General Urban Planning Plan (PGMO) to allow the installation of a desalinated water tank in the Montepino area (Las Paulinas). This is a tank of 20,000 cubic meters (m3) that Aguas de Alicante has requested to implement with the aim of improving the city’s water supply, «mainly» in the San Juan beach, La Condomina, and La Albufereta.
Since the land where this desalinated water tank is intended to be installed is classified as non-developable, the City Council, through the Urban Planning department, has started the procedures to modify the PGMO in order to classify the tank plot as ‘general systems’, with a double category of services and infrastructures, as stated by the municipality in a press release.
This modification has received the approval of the Urban Planning Commission on Friday, before the March plenary session. The resolution of allegations and provisional approval has received the votes in favor of PP, Vox, and Compromís, and the abstention of PSOE and EU-Podem.
This modification also involves the delimitation of the access to the tank as a rural road, the demarcation of the filling and emptying pipeline layout to establish easements, the modification of articles 27 and 45 to clarify the execution criteria of these types of facilities in non-developable land, and the inclusion of a new article in the urban planning regulations that regulates the urbanistic conditions and corresponding landscape integration measures.
IMPROVING WATER SUPPLY
The new drinking water tank in Montepino has been designed to receive the volumes of desalinated water from the Mutxamel desalination plant, intended for the supply of the municipal area of Alicante.
Although these volumes are already being received at present, the new regulating tank improves the resilience and flexibility of the supply system, which «will allow to meet more efficiently and with greater guarantees the supply needs of the city and its future growth.»
The tank must be located at a level that can supply «mainly» the area of the San Juan beach, Condomina, and La Albufereta in order to guarantee supply in this area, which «sometimes and especially in the summer period, demands a large amount of water, reaching at present an annual consumption of three cubic hectometers (hm3), with supply peaks in the summer period of 17,000 m3/day).»
After consulting with the Ministry of Housing, Public Works, and Territorial Planning, the Urban Planning department has decided that the «ideal» location for the tank was Las Paulinas, specifically on a hill called Montepino.
PROJECT MOTIVATION
Within the framework of the Water Management and Use Actions Program (AGUA Program), developed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment, the works called ‘Desalination and complementary works for the Marina Baja – Alicante. Mutxamel Solution’ were included, aimed at reducing groundwater extractions in the L’Alicantí area.
These actions included the construction of a seawater desalination plant in Mutxamel (IDAM) with a production capacity of 50,000 m3/day, as well as projects that supply high to the populations of San Juan, Campello, Mutxamel, Alicante, and San Vicente del Raspeig, one of them being the ‘Complementary Works Project of the desalination plant of the Marina Baja (Mutxamel, Alicante), municipal terms of San Juan, San Vicente del Raspeig, and Alicante’.
The action consisted of the execution of a pumping branch from the treated water pumping outlet of the desalination plant through a common pumping with the municipal term of San Juan de Alicante, which would later be distributed to two tanks, one for San Juan of 8,000 m3 located next to the existing one, and another to supply the municipal term of Alicante with a capacity of 20,000 m3, which is the one planned to be installed, according to the location and volume agreed after consulting with the Conselleria.