The Region of Murcia is the autonomous community that presents the greatest risk for the population with a 100-year flood plateau. If “the flood of the century” were to arrive, almost 320,000 people could be affected, 21% of the Region’s total population. And a third of the total of all of Spain.
More than 260,000 of these 320,000 people live in the capital, the city of Murcia. This area at risk of flooding leads this dangerous record, ahead of cities like Barcelona; while Cartagena, Los Alcázares and Los Nietos come in fifth place, with nearly 52,000 inhabitants in flood-prone areas, according to a report by the NGO Sustainability Observatory.
Biologist Raúl Estévez, responsible for the report, warns that climate change increases the power of the cold drop: “Murcia has not yet had such a strong DANA, but measures must be taken now for when the great flood comes, which It will pass.”
“We already have torrential rains twice as frequent and 12% more intense, and it will get worse if we do not recover natural ecosystems. But, in addition, we have to adapt. And adapting means respecting flood zones,” warns Julia Martínez, biologist and technical director of the New Culture of Water Foundation.
Return territory to the rivers
“Not a single euro should be given to rebuilding high-risk areas. This money must be dedicated to relocating public facilities and basic services to safe areas. Families need help to rebuild their lives in safe places, but in no way should what has been damaged be rebuilt in a high-risk area,” says Martínez.
“In addition to combating climate change, we have to adapt. And the only way to adapt is to take the recovery of flood zones very seriously. We have to return part of the territory that we have taken from the rivers and not put even one more brick in flood-prone areas,” he says.
In Murcia capital, the flood zone covers the central area to the neighboring Alcantarilla, while in Cartagena the risk is in the urban center. The Mar Menor, the south of Los Alcázares, Los Nietos and the Estrella de Mar urbanization, along with the councils of El Algar, El Albujón and La Unión are also painted red on the map of the areas with the highest risk of flooding.
Three floods in five months
“Measures must be taken, otherwise it is nonsense,” claims the mayor of Los Alcázares, Mario Cervera. He knows very well what it is like to experience a flood. In 2016, floods left two dead. Three years later, in 2019, the town suffered a DANA and had to rebuild after surviving three floods in five months. In October of that year, the storm was accompanied by an episode of death of thousands of fish, suffocated without oxygen and spit out on the shores of the Mar Menor.
Year after year “channels and boulevards have been occupied and there are critical points where the rains come unchecked,” warns the first mayor of Los Alcázares. “You have to be aware of the use of the territory and have emergency plans updated,” he adds.
These cold drop chapters were the trigger for the announcement with great fanfare by the Autonomous Community of a Territorial Planning Plan for the Prevention of Flood Risk in the Region of Murcia (POTPRI). Presented for the first time in December 2020, it sought, in the words of the then general director of Territory and Architecture, Jaime Pérez Zulueta, “to provide a definitive solution to flooding in the Region of Murcia in the field of territorial planning.”
But the Plan ended up stored in a drawer in 2021, after the Community left the tender for the contract for drafting that document void. The floods in Valencia seem to have made the Government of the Region of Murcia react and they have now dusted it off.
“It is important to emphasize that the powers regarding limitations on uses and activities in areas at risk of flooding correspond to the State and are included in the state sectoral legislation. Therefore, the POTPRI may establish complementary measures to those established by the Ministry as the competent administration in the management of the Hydraulic Public Domain,” the Department of Infrastructure Development explains.
“All powers in territorial management are exclusive to the Autonomous Community,” Julia Martínez denies. “Meteorological and hydrological data are the responsibility of the State, but actions in both territorial planning and emergency management are exclusive to the autonomous communities,” he details.
Green light to build in a flood zone
In the Region of Murcia, urban planning in flood-prone areas is a constant. Much has been built in a flood zone, and much remains to be built. This is the case of, for example, Costera Sur, a communication road in the southern area of the Murcian capital in a preferential flow flood zone: “We are talking about an area that floods no matter what, it means putting people in a mousetrap,” defines Pedro Luengo, spokesperson for Ecologistas en Acción.
“Once you build a high-capacity communication road, you generate a call effect that makes people not mind building there, even if it is further away from the center,” he adds.
The rest of the capital will have even more facilities to build in a flood zone. Last April, the city of Murcia was granted the high flood regime. This is an exception to the general urban planning rule that will allow building with a series of requirements in the Preferential Flow Zones (ZFP) of the municipality.
The Ministry of the Interior, Emergencies and Territorial Planning of the Autonomous Community gave the go-ahead to grant this regime, designed for municipalities with more than a third of their surface included in the Preferential Flow Zone or, which due to the morphology of their territory , have a material impossibility to direct their future developments towards non-flood zones.
The Murcian council wanted to send a message of tranquility, and affirms that it checks that the new urbanization projects and the construction licenses are complying with the Regulation of the Hydraulic Public Domain: “Urbanization projects are being required to: Hydrological study, of the Effect of floods and the adoption of measures of all kinds to eliminate the effects of floods in compliance with the Regulation of the Hydraulic Public Domain,” it lists.
“In the review of the General Urban Planning Plan, the City Council will analyze the impact on territorial planning of the mapping of preferential flow areas, which is what the Hydraulic Public Domain Regulation requires. It will take into account all sectoral reports depending on the scope of the different competencies,” he adds.
A “very extensive” map
In this Community the fight for construction in a flood zone has been in favor of its construction. In 2022, a controversy arose against the flood zone maps presented by the Segura Hydrographic Confederation (CHS). The Regional Government accused the CHS of having drawn up a “very extensive” map that paralyzed “all construction in the city of Murcia.”
“What these maps are basically stating is that the city of Murcia should be moved to another place,” when the then Minister of Public Works, José Ramón Díez de Revenga, said these words in 2022, complaining about the maps of flood zones. published by the Segura Hydrographic Confederation, he never thought that his statements, far from being a joke, should be taken seriously.
The Segura Hydrographic Confederation, in charge of preparing these maps, opened a process of allegations. The construction sector joined the complaints of the Executive, which warned that the brake on construction licenses was causing “very serious consequences.” The conflict was resolved when the CHS opened a process of allegations and, after reviewing them, eliminated 1,601 hectares previously included in the preferential flow zones.
More works, more risks
Biologist Raúl Estévez points out as a first solution “the importance of taking into account the risk of flooding when continuing to urbanize.” And he describes it as “vital” to develop as much as possible tools linked to nature to mitigate the impact of floods. “Reforest and recover the greatest possible naturalness of the water channel compared to the construction of large concrete channels, which only serve to accelerate the passage of floods through the avenues.”
Martínez, for his part, is committed to eight water control measures, among which is “applying sustainable drainage measures in urban areas, such as permeable pavements or filtering ditches, rain gardens or artificial wetlands.” , lists.
He is also committed to “recovering soil conservation and runoff retention measures”: “We have very intensive agro-industrial irrigation systems that expel water instead of retaining it, which increases runoff.”
“We have more works and infrastructure than ever, but the damage is increasingly catastrophic,” explains the biologist. “The evidence shows that the solution is not in gray infrastructure and, in fact, there are negative effects associated with works such as canals, dikes and breakwaters: they create a false sense of security that further facilitates and encourages occupation of flood-prone areas,” he explains.
According to the biologist, these works sometimes “aggravate the damage” that a flood can initially cause: “If, for example, we prevent a river from occupying its channel with a channel and we make it narrow with a wall, the water it doesn’t disappear. What happens is that the height and speed of the water increases. This makes it more dangerous.”
“There is also the risk of the damage being distributed: sometimes one area has been saved at the cost of flooding others. This happened in the 2019 DANA in Los Alcázares, the defense works against floods prevented the city of Murcia from flooding at the expense of the Vega Baja,” explains Martínez.
Execute pending infrastructures
On the other hand, the Autonomous Community has demanded this week – together with the College of Civil Engineers, Canals and Ports – the CHS to execute the “pending” hydraulic infrastructures to reduce the risk of flooding to the extent possible.
Some works that “are already analyzed and proposed in the current Flood Risk Management Plan (PGRI) prepared by the CHS in 2015 and recently updated in 2021”, according to the Minister of Public Works, Jorge García Montoro, who has considered “key” are containment and defense actions such as dams or channeling.
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