The town council of San Clemente (Cuenca, Spain) will rely on its municipal wells and its drinking water treatment plant to maintain supply while the Tubería Manchega pipeline is cut off. Its mayor, Víctor Luis Camacho, explained this on Radio Azul (Cadena SER) on 21 October. The cut is due to damage to two sections of the Tajo-Segura Aqueduct canal detected in September.

The mayor’s plan:

  • Test the quality of the well water that same week.
  • From the following week, blend water from the wells with the water arriving through the Tubería Manchega.
  • From early November, draw supply from the wells alone, treated at the municipal plant.

The Central Operating Committee of the Tajo-Segura Aqueduct met on 27 October. According to the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO):

  • The Tajo River Basin Authority reported on the diagnosis of the two breaks, at La Bujeda and Liétor, carried out with ground-penetrating radar. The State Secretariat for the Environment had declared the repair an emergency, with a budget of 1.2 million euros.
  • The technical services stand by the original timeline: works will finish around mid-February 2027.
  • In the meantime, a provisional, partial reopening of the first section, at La Bujeda, until 31 December has been proposed, with priority for drinking water supply. This would mean suspending works on that section, which would resume from 1 January 2027.
  • The Guadiana River Basin Authority asked to receive 2.5 hm³ as soon as possible to supply the Tubería Manchega in October and November.

The MITECO statement does not say when this partial reopening would start.

Sources: Cadena SER (Radio Azul), 21 October 2026, and MITECO, 27 October 2026. Image: Tajo-Segura transfer canal in the province of Albacete. Alejandro Navarro López, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).