Housing plan threat to natural spaces
Ecologists say any development in the area would be at risk of flooding
PLANS to expand a housing development on the edge of San Fulgencio have been objected to by ecologists from the association friends of south Alicante wetlands (AHSA).
According to the arguments submitted by AHSA spokesman Sergio Arroyo, the strategic environmental and territorial evaluation (EATE) ordered by the town hall downplays several negative effects which the UE-7 Las Pesqueras PAI development project would have on the sector and its surrounding areas.
Sector UE-7 is located on the coastal side of the N-332 opposite the commercial park at the entrance to La Marina urbanisation, adjacent to the municipal border with Guardamar del Segura, and a number of homes are already there.
It covers a total of about 65,000 square metres, of which over 35,000m2 was allocated for residential use in the municipality’s 1995 Town Plan (PGOU).
“There is no way that it can be believed that the PAI would not have significant adverse effects on the environment, because the planned development project is located within the basin that affects the listed wetland of the mouth and coastline of the River Segura,” the AHSA claims.
The urbanisation would have an ‘evident’ negative impact on the environment and the landscape of the wetland, ‘further contributing to its recession and degradation’, which would be against the regional law for protected natural spaces. Furthermore, the land in the sector is very highly permeable, meaning that any contaminating spillage could have ‘rapid and dire consequences on the adjacent wetland’, the association assures.
The sector is also directly adjacent to the dunes of Guardamar, which is classified by the EU as part of its Natura 2000 network and a Site of Community Importance (LIC in Spanish), and would also contribute to their recession and degradation.
The ecologists also highlight that photos from the 1956 aerial mapping survey of Spain clearly identified the land in question as traditional farmland of the Vega Baja area, which forms part of the regional catalogue of relevant landscapes (PRR), as does the also directly adjacent PRR of the Elche and Santa Pola wetlands.
“The urban consolidation of the sector would have a clear negative effect on both these landscapes,” they claim.
Moreover, the PATRICOVA flood risk plan puts all the land in UE-7 within an area which has the second highest danger level of flooding on a scale of 1-6, and is at medium risk of flooding.
The PATRICOVA plan explains this signifies it is likely to flood with at least 0.8 metres of water between every 25 to 100 years.
“For this reason its urban consolidation is absolutely unadvisable, even more so in the current context of climate change and increasingly aggressive and virulent DANAs (cut-off low storms),” the AHSA insists.
“It is the administration’s obligation to prevent the population from being exposed to risks such as flooding, a risk to which the people resident in UE-7 would without doubt be subject to.”