Sector ZP-Pn5 · News
Northern Murcia flood interceptor moves forward, shielding the Sector from its ramblas
Murcia City Council and the Ministry sign a protocol to advance the interceptor collector that will drain the Barnuevo, Churra y Torre and Espinardo ramblas into the Segura river.
9 July 2026
Spain's Ministry for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, through the Confederación Hidrográfica del Segura, has for years been processing the project for the northern Murcia interceptor collector: an underground hydraulic structure roughly seven kilometres long that will collect water from the Churra y Torre, Barnuevo and Espinardo ramblas —via retention dikes and attenuation zones at their headwaters— and channel it in a controlled way into the Segura river, near La Arboleja. The work is part of the Segura river basin's Flood Risk Management Plan (PGRI) and covers all four flood risk areas (ARPSI ES070/0009-1 to -4) into which the city's northern zone is divided.
On 9 July 2026, Murcia's mayor, Rebeca Pérez, and Spain's Secretary of State for the Environment, Hugo Alfonso Morán, signed a general action protocol to push the works forward in four independent phases, with a €1.68 million, 18-month contract just to draft the construction project, and an estimated execution cost of around €102 million. The different phases include storage zones of between 28,600 and 64,600 m³.
The project has been years in the making —the first tender for its drafting dates back to 2016, and its preliminary design was optimised in 2021— so the July 2026 protocol marks the most concrete institutional push to date, though the works remain at the design stage and no start date has yet been set.
How does this relate to Sector ZP-Pn5?
The Rambla de Barnuevo runs very close to Avenida Juan de Borbón, crossing Sector ZP-Pn5 from north to south. Building the interceptor resolves the flood risk this rambla poses during torrential rain, which speeds up the Sector's development by clearing one of the hydraulic constraints currently affecting its urbanisation.
Source: Ministerio para la Transición Ecológica y el Reto Demográfico (MITECO)