«Its deep and wide channel is always dry, except in the floods, when it receives so much water and flows so furiously that it destroys everything it finds. In 1775 he caused many misfortunes in Chiva, surprising his neighbors at midnight. It devastated a considerable number of buildings, scattering for more than two leagues the sad remains and the corpses of the poor who could not avoid death. This is how the botanist Antonio José de Cavanilles described the famous Poyo ravine, in his ‘Natural History of the King of Valencia’published in 1795.
The book is a sad warning or preview of the danger that its neighbors were in and that, unfortunately, was confirmed last week with the floods caused by DANA, which have so far caused 223 deaths and dozens missing. The majority, from the aforementioned ravine, which is actually an old acquaintance for all experts in the area, including the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation (CHJ). Already in 2009, this body dependent on the Ministry for the Ecological Transition drafted a ‘Project for environmental adaptation and drainage of the Poyo basin on the Albufera side’, which it later compartmentalized into seven different projects, aware of the danger. Since then, the local councils in the area have not stopped complaining.
As reported by the ABC journalist Isabel Miranda a week ago, after learning of the disaster, among these projects that were contemplated, the report of the last Flood Risk Management Plan (2022-2027) assured, for example, that the execution of the project to divert part of the water from the ravine of the Poyo upstream of Paiportauntil the new channel of the Turia River, would begin in 2022, after successfully passing the cost-benefit analyses, among other procedures. “The torrential rainfall pattern that occurs in the Poyo basin and the high degree of urbanization of the basin mean that the risk of flooding is very high, since the channel overflows easily,” this latest report acknowledged.
All these recent studies, therefore, identified the entire area as an area of significant potential risk, as Cavanilles already anticipated two and a half centuries ago, without anyone paying attention then, nor do they continue to pay attention to it now. The risk of flooding in the Poyo ravineIndeed, it was known. It has been a recurring phenomenon, as attested to by the 67 floods recognized in the National Catalog of Historical Floods. More than a dozen have occurred in this century, although none as devastating as the current one, when the water discharged by the DANA gained strength, volume and speed through said channel and devastated Paiporta, Catarroja and Benetússer, among other towns.
The description of the Poyo ravine
Cavanilles described this natural accident that caused so many misfortunes like this: «Continuing towards the south from Alacuás, about a quarter of a league, cross the ravine, which begins in the mountains of Buñol towards Chiva, enters this town, and continues through the municipality of Cheste, where it receives another considerable [cauce]: thickened with this increase and with the slopes of those mountains, it crosses the plain of Quart next to the Poyo window, then passes through the outskirts of Torrent, which it leaves on its right, as well as Catarroja, and empties into the Albufera de Valencia ».
Proof of the risk posed by this channel, which the famous botanist born in Valencia in 1745 warned about, and which has never been remedied, is that places like Paiporta, Alfafar or Picaña, where the water hit last week with all its force, taking homes and lives, were not the ones that received the most rain from DANA. However, they were areas of potential risk of flooding, as pointed out two centuries ago by ‘Natural History of the King of Valencia’.
The “origin of the whole problem,” Félix Francés, a researcher at the Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, now summarizes, was above all this Poyo ravine. Also that of Pozalet, but to a much lesser extent. The problem is that, although normally “its wide channel is always dry”, as Cavanilles wrote in 1775, before the DANA it once again functioned as a funnel that drained the torrential rains that had fallen at the head of the basin, higher altitude. This time, causing many more deaths than on other occasions… or so we assume, because Cavanilles did not offer any number of victims.
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