Orihuela’s Mayor, Carolina Gracia, has lent the support of the new government team for the rainwater reuse project in Orihuela Costa and Torrevieja proposed by the General Directorate of Water of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Valencian Government.
In a meeting held at the Orihuela town hall, the Director General for Water, Manuel Aldeguer, informed the mayor, Carolina Gracia, and the Councillor for infrastructure, Ángel Manuel Noguera, of the details of a project whose budget could exceed 15 million euro, and whose objective is to ensure that the irrigation of the agricultural communities around Torremiguel, San Miguel de Salinas and La Pedrera have new water resources.
The project of the Generalitat contemplates the diversion of rainwater runoff from Orihuela Costa, which every year generates problems of discharges into the sea mixed with water from the sanitation network. In this way, this network of rainwater would prevent the flows in this area from ending up in a sewage network that lacks the capacity to pump all that mixed water and that ends up flowing on the surface and along the streets, to the beaches and the sea.
In the same way, this recovery of the runoff water that is generated in episodes of rain such as those that have occurred in recent times, would be incorporated into the reclaimed water reserve managed by various irrigation communities in the area, with the flows of the main accumulation areas, around the open-air collectors in Torrevieja in the vicinity of the CV-90 to prevent flooding, and driving it with pumps to the reservoirs of the irrigation communities, located next to the water treatment plant.
In the opinion of the Mayor, Carolina Gracia “we are facing a positive project for the water interests of our area, and that is based on the principle of water recovery.” Gracia points out that “from Orihuela we are going to join all those projects that involve optimising every drop of water that reaches our area to the maximum.”
In this sense, Gracia points out that the Generalitat Valenciana, chaired by Ximo Puig, “has always put on the table coherent projects and important investments to ensure and increase our water resources. In recent years, the Generalitat has been putting projects, investments and staunch defence of the Tajo-Segura transfer on the table, without demagoguery or the use of water as a political weapon, but rather as projects that benefit the irrigators and agriculture”.
