As the search for missing people continues in flood-hit Valencia, Spanish authorities are now warning that the floods could lead to an environmental disaster.
Half of the sewage treatment plants are out of use in the province – without the treatment plants, sewage from the cities risks being released into the Júcar and Turia rivers, then spreading to the rest of the ecosystem. A total of 107 treatment plants are to be out of operation according to information from local authorities to the Ministry of the Environment.
There is particular concern for the Albufera de València nature reserve. A lagoon that has become a symbol of biodiversity in Spain. The reserve is approximately 22,000 hectares in size.
“Literally buried”
Spain’s Minister of the Environment, Hugo Morán, has declared in Congress that the issue of sanitation is at the top of the agenda when his ministry analyzes the consequences for water management in the area. Treatment plants are much harder hit than, for example, water reservoirs, because they are to a greater extent coated downstream.
Many of the treatment plants are “literally buried”, the minister is said to have said on Wednesday, reports El País.
A week after the disaster, the problem is no longer supplying the people with water, but rather the management of the millions of liters of sewage that are released into the rivers. Hugo Morán believes that access to water in homes has practically been restored. However, local authorities continue to urge the population to boil the water, which may be a little cloudy.
Gonna deploy an army of plumbers
It is not yet possible to say what the costs of the damage to the treatment plants amount to.
– There are facilities that we haven’t even been able to enter yet. They are under the mud, says a representative from Valencia’s provincial council to El País.
The discharges into the rivers are deemed unavoidable, and may continue for a long time to come. The industrial treatment plants are also overloaded, and emissions from the industries also risk ending up in the rivers and spreading further into nature.
In the cities, the mud creates problems for drainage systems. The mud that ends up in stormwater wells solidifies underground, preventing water from draining away.
Valencia now plans to deploy an army of plumbers from across Spain to fix leaks in pipes above ground. The pipes must have been damaged when objects such as cars and other debris were carried along the streets by the masses of water.
On Tuesday 11:01