The delegate of the Government in the Valencian Community, Pilar Bernabé has met this morning with the president of the Hydrographic Confederation of Júcar, O.A., (CHJ), Miguel Polo, to analyze the actions carried out by the agency in relation to the management of avenues. In this regard, he has highlighted the investment made in the conservation and maintenance of waterways in this hydrological year (from 1 October to the present): a total of 163 actions that add up to an investment of close to seven million euros.
The meeting was held at the headquarters of the Government Delegation with the aim of coordinating actions against possible conditions that may cause the rainy episode, in the form of DANA, scheduled for this weekend. A meeting also attended by the technical director of the CHJ, Manuel Torán, and the deputy delegate of the Government in Valencia, Raquel Ibáñez.
The government delegate has highlighted the “important work done by the basin agency for flood risk prevention”. In this regard, Pilar Bernabé has stressed the importance of the Flood Irrigation Management Plan, revised and approved at the beginning of this year, as a key tool to reduce possible conditions in large avenues. This weekend, the delegate added, “faced with the possibility of major rains, a special monitoring of the situation of channels will be carried out in coordination with Civil Protection.”
Bernabé also recalled the significant investment already planned to continue these flood risk prevention projects. “We are talking about works that have a budget of more than 100 million euros, cofinanced also with European funds. These are actions that are going to take place in different parts of the Valencian Community, such as in Alzira and Carcaixent, which will end with a problem that has been repeated over the years,” he said.
Given the expected arrival of rains in much of the Júcar basin this weekend, Miguel Polo highlighted the work carried out by the Automatic Hydrological Information System (SAIH), a system that provides “updated information on the flow of rivers, the state of reservoirs and the amount of rain recorded in different points of the territory.” “This data, together with the information provided to us by the environmental agents deployed in the field and the technical personnel of the dams, are essential to know how they are affecting rainfall throughout the basin,” he said.
Restoration and conservation of waterways
Miguel Polo recalled that more than seven million euros have been invested so far in various actions of conservation, adaptation and improvement of waterways, works that the Hydrographic Confederation of Júcar carries out throughout the year. However, these waterway maintenance tasks represent a small part of the Agency’s flood risk management.
“The main tool available to the Confederations to reduce flood risks, in addition to the SAIH, are dams. In an avenue situation, a dam reduces water speed, erosion and sediment transport and decreases the tip of the avenue at the same time as delaying it,” he said. In this sense, Polo recalled that these functions “are exactly the same as the natural vegetation of the rivers, but not in a timely and localized way but in a distributed way throughout the river basin”.
The president of the CHJ has explained that the widespread elimination of all riverside vegetation on the waterways is not an adequate measure for flood risk management. “The Confederation will never remove vegetation indiscriminately, only the one that can cause plugs: fallen trees, accumulation of sediments, etc...”.
It has also indicated that both the removal of some of the vegetation from the urban section of the river and the maintenance of the works of passage that exist in the municipal term are the responsibility of the municipalities, who must request prior authorization from the Agency to carry out this type of action.