It's widely known that the land around the Rules Reservoir is unstable; one look at the N-323a, under constant repair, is a good indication of it.

We did an article in 2021 about the danger of a landslip into a full reservoir, which would be a disaster along the lines of Vajont in Italy in 1963, but a full reservoir is not something that we have to worry about at the moment, is it?

The fact that there is so little water in Rules is actually causing problems in itself concerning the structural integrity of the structure, where the autovía goes over the Órgiva arm of the reservoir. The greater the volume of water; the greater the support to the surrounding hillside – if you take away the support of the water…

Readers might remember an article we ran about when they built that bridge, or viaduct, it began to sink, so they had to close the road, empty the reservoir enough to get at the base of the pillars and put an extra one in to correct it.

The thing is that the Board of Ministers (Cabinet) issued a Declaration of Emergency in order to release funds to put right the deficiencies that are now cropping up beneath the bridge.

The Minister for Transport explained that during one of the periodic inspections that his department carries out on roads, bridges and tunnels, they found that the fourth supporting pillar was damaged because of earth movements, or as he put it, “owing to the structural and lithological characteristics” of the land below it.

Earth-moving equipment has already moved in so that the pillar can eventually be reinforced, which will cost about 9.5m euros. The foundation of the pillar will be reinforced with 50-metre-wide piles that will go down 1.5 metres – no, we haven’t got the wrong way round.

This work should not affect traffic circulation unless things get complicated. It would be more inconvenient if they have to drain the already low water level in the reservoir.

(News/Noticas: Velez de Benaudalla, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)