Valencia will not be the same after DANA. The long reconstruction process has not yet finished and there is no shortage of key infrastructure so that citizens can regain normality and, if they suffer floods again, they will be less affected. An example: the new Quart de Poblet substation DANAs-proof to guarantee the electrical supply or the new pipelines of the La Presa (Manises) and El Realón (Picassent) water treatment plants so that no matter what happens, there is no shortage of drinking water.
Context. Valencia and its metropolitan area drink from two rivers: the Júcar River (Picassent) and the Turia River (Manises) through their respective Drinking Water Treatment Stations with a high water network system. We are talking about the capital and approximately fifty municipalities, about 1.7 million inhabitants.
Until before this canalization work, Valencia’s supply system operated in a compartmentalized manner, that is, the DWTPs were not interconnected. This represents a serious inconvenience: in the event of a failure in one plant (floods, breakdowns, lack of electricity supply) in one, the other does not have the physical capacity to divert flow to the affected sector. In short: there are parts of Valencia that are left without drinking water.
Why is it important. Because this water highway project will ensure uninterrupted and proper supply to the metropolitan area of Valencia. DANA tragically taught us that extreme climate events occur closer than we think and that we must get ready because we are going to see more of them: Spain should raise awareness of the culture of emergency. In this sense, a possible blackout or a flood is not a theoretical incident, but something that happens in reality: part of the metropolitan area of Valencia he ran out of water those days.
The work. To connect the two water treatment plants, 1,667 meters of pipe have been installed from the end of section I in urban Xirivella to the DN1600 pipe located in Valencia. The project is not new: it began in 2014 and will culminate in 2027 with a final section, which requires this 25-kilometer-long water highway with a large-caliber pipeline (1.4 meters in diameter) under the ground.
The new channeling requires tunnels under the Turia River bed and other infrastructure, minimizing the surface impact on the Natural Park and the Orchard, a technical challenge of underground surgery in which the main pipes of the city will be connected, minimizing supply cuts. The total investment is 113 million, of which 13 will go only to this last section.
A “smart” water highway. The achievement is not so much the implementation of this new network of pipes but the interconnectivity: now the water will be able to go where it is needed in an intelligent way, so that no one is left without supply, giving a new twist to the resilience of the facilities. From here, the ball is in the state of the Júcar and Turia rivers.
In Xataka | Iberdrola deploys in Valencia the first 66 kV substation in the world “armored” in front of the DANA
Cover | Waters of Valencia and EMIVASA
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