A plan to make downtown Albufeira safe from flooding will be presented on November 2nd, a year and a day after the torrential 2015 downpour caused €25 million worth of damage.
The expensive and unauthorised flood defence work carried out under former mayor Desidério Silva proved to be useless and a significant waste of money.
The first stage of the new plan is to build a new, wide-bore drainage tunnel costing €15 million. This and other civil engineering details have been devised by José Saldanha Matos, a professor at the Higher Technical Institute who thankfully has extensive experience in this area.
The professor and his team have worked on a similar plan in Barcelona, Paris and in Lisbon and is drawing on expertise at the National Civil Engineering Laboratory, the University of the Algarve, the less than competent Portuguese Environment Agency and technicians at Albufeira council.
It is hoped by all that the regional hydrographical board is asked for its opinion this time around, and that its opinion is taken seriously - not ignored as it was by Desidério Silva with disastrous results.
"What we want is to gather as much technical knowledge to minimise the possible effects of these floods," said mayor Carlos Silva e Sousa in December 2015.
This may have been achieved but with the flood defences in the same state as they were a year ago, Albufeira’s downtown shopkeepers will be praying that last November 1st’s rainfall is not repeated before such time as the mayor’s new flood defence plan is finished and the new tunnel and other works are completed.
