Rural flood plan scrapped
GOVERNMENT proposals to reduce the risk of future flooding in the Vega Baja area will no longer consider the possibility of establishing a so-called ‘green corridor’ that would affect large swathes of Dolores and San Fulgencio, the mayor of the former municipality has claimed.
Joaquín Hernández said on Monday that this was confirmed at his meeting in Madrid on Friday with the secretary of state for the environment Hugo Morán, regional government director of water Manuel Aldeguer, and San Fulgencio mayor José Sampere.
The government had put a contract out to tender for almost €2.5 million to draw up the preliminary project and environmental authorisation procedure for this and other proposals.
At the meeting it was agreed to scrap the particular proposal which would have had such an impact on these municipalities, draw up a new contract with solutions which change the risk management strategy, and put it out to tender again, said Sr Hernández.
He criticised the Partido Popular (PP) and Ciudadanos (Cs) opposition parties for having tried to make political capital out of a proposal he assured ‘would never have been carried out’.
This was even though the government had already assured that any solutions would only be carried out with the maximum consensus of affected town halls and civil society, and official objections were lodged by these town halls, the regional government and the farming community.
“They instilled fear in people with homes and land in the countryside, created social alarm, and used all sorts of dirty tricks which have done a lot of harm to this town, even though they knew this would not happen,” asserted Sr Hernández.
“They said their land and homes would be expropriated
to turn them into the drain of the Vega Baja, and that if there were another
DANA (cut-off low) storm, Dolores would disappear under the water.”