Albufeira wants to have a new hydrological plan ready in 2020 to avoid flood situations such as what happened last November 1st, repeat. The president of the Chamber of Albufeires Carlos Silva e Sousa revealed yesterday, during the visit of the Parliamentary Committee for the Environment, Spatial Planning and Local Government, which is already starting the process of studies, to carry out the necessary works in a period of five years, but warned that «this will be a severe patrimonial sacrifice for the finances of the municipality».
The mayor admitted that "the problem happened because we had construction on top of the riverbed" and said that Albufeira "is in an area at risk of flooding, which reports say, with climate change, they can happen - even if less severity – every five years'.
This is a scenario that leads Carlos Silva e Sousa to want to “get to work”. “It is this panorama that we have to work on. The process is already underway to proceed with studies, to move to the design phase and then to the construction phase. I would say that the complete hydrological plan can be concluded in 2020. That's what the people of Albufeira want, because it will be a severe patrimonial sacrifice for the municipality».
To help carry out this costly work for the Council, "we have to start by classifying the Municipality as a flood risk zone, in order to have access to funds, to carry out the necessary works".
The mayor emphasizes that “these will be structuring infrastructures for the future. It is a work for the century».
Although it is still "early", Carlos Silva e Sousa says that "in terms of ideas, already with some technical support, a new tunnel can be created to divert the waters of downtown Albufeira".
For the mayor, it will be necessary «to divert the rainwater, the waters that come from the Albufeira stream, and there is still the problem of tides at this low. Therefore, the work has to be done outside this [low] zone so that you only have the water that falls here. Let's see if everything is completed in 2020».
Pedro Soares, president of the Parliamentary Committee for the Environment, Spatial Planning and Local Government, also highlighted the importance “of taking measures so that these situations do not recur”.
For the deputy, “the situation on November 1st was very serious and relates to situations that are structural and have to be resolved in a structural way. They are not solutions for the immediate, but for the future and that is what the population is demanding so that this dramatic situation does not repeat itself».
The chairman of the commission that visited Albufeira yesterday, together with the deputies elected by the Algarve, says that «it is necessary that the PDMs foresee these situations and that urban interventions take into account the situations of water drainage, to prevent the flood beds are occupied, that the beds are cleaned. This set of measures, which sometimes we only remember later, needs to be taken upstream and we think that this visit and the intervention of the deputies can contribute for that to happen», he considered.
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