The Albufeira Basin Drainage Plan, which aims to solve a large part of the problems that lead to periodic and increasingly frequent flooding in the city's downtown, will be presented on November 2, the day after the first anniversary of the 2015 floods.
«We have been working on a serious project, to resolve as much as possible the effects of the rains on the scale of that of November 1st last year», the mayor of Albufeira told journalists, at the end of the presentation of the county's New Year's program.
The mayor added that, among other things, the Drainage Plan includes the construction of a «great new tunnel, leaving between the Rossio area and Porto de Abrigo». "Initially, only in this work, there will be 15 million euros of investment", he announced.
Carlos Silva e Sousa: «Surely the municipality will not stop doing this work, with or without external funding»
And where will this money come from? Are there European funds for these purposes? The social-democratic mayor, stressing that this will be «the investment of the century in Albufeira», guaranteed that «certainly the municipality will not stop doing this work, with or without external funding». "This is an essential work and it's not me who consider it, it's the experts."
The Albufeira Drainage Plan has been drawn up by the Albufeira team. José Saldanha Matos, full professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, with extensive experience in the field, having worked on similar plans made for Barcelona, Paris or, more recently, Lisbon. The same team is also involved in the design of the new urban park to be built near the mouth of the Alcantarilha stream, in Armação de Pêra, in order to put an end to the floods in this village in the neighboring municipality of Silves.
In addition to Saldanha Matos, also coordinator of the Hidra/Engidro and author of the Lisbon General Drainage Plan 2016-2030, the Plan, according to Mayor Carlos Silva e Sousa, has the collaboration of the National Laboratory of Civil Engineering (LNEC), of the University of Algarve, and also technicians from the Portuguese Environment Agency of the municipality itself. «What we want is to gather as much technical knowledge as possible, to minimize the effects of these floods as much as possible», which are becoming more and more frequent.
“Last year, despite all the losses [estimated at €25 million] we were lucky that no one died. What if that had happened? How much is a human life worth? It's incalculable!”, added the mayor of Albufeira, to justify a “fundamental” investment, which could reach well over 20 million euros in total.
In December of last year, Carlos Silva e Sousa had already advanced to the Sul Informação that the solution to the problem of floods in Albufeira will involve several interventions, namely the construction or reinforcement of water retention dams, upstream of the more urbanized area, but also the construction of a new tunnel, with greater capacity and leading to a location different, at a higher height, so as not to be affected either by the tides or the predictable rise in sea level.
In the case of retention basins, the mayor had explained that, contrary to what happened until November last year in existing structures, those that will now be created or reinforced will have to have "permanent technicians on site", "to open or close , to open more or less».
Carlos Silva e Sousa: «What we want is to gather as much technical knowledge as possible, to minimize the effects of these floods as much as possible»
As for the "new tunnel", it may even have more capacity than necessary and, even so, save Albufeira money. The Algarve Council may establish a partnership with Lisbon, so that the opening of the Albufeira tunnel will use the same machine that will be built to open the two tunnels planned for Lisbon.
For, explained the mayor, "just making a machine with the appropriate measures to build a tunnel like this costs 15 million euros." Therefore, if the works in both cities use the same machine, the costs will be shared.
But the details of the interventions needed and their costs are expected to be revealed in just over two weeks, on 2 November.
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