During the year 2025, the Xunta DE Galicia plans to carry out conservation and cleaning work that will cover approximately 550 km of Galician rivers. The objective of these actions is increase its resistance and resilience to possible floods.
This was announced by the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Ángeles Vázquez, during her visit to a section of the Carboeiro River, in Oroso, where Augas de Galicia staff are currently carrying out various maintenance and conditioning works.
After specifying that the budget reserved for next year in the regional plan for the conservation of the rivers of Galicia-Costa amounts to 2.7 million euros, the regional official explained that the most common works consist of the removal of fallen trees in the river channels, cleaning the banks, controlling invasive exotic species and the elimination of obstacles that hinder the natural flow of water.
These works seek to have a minimum impact on the ecosystem, recover the good condition of the rivers and mitigate potential flood risks. In this sense, according to Ángeles Vázquez, the ultimate objective is to maintain the natural conditions of the river channels, recover their geomorphological functionality, eliminate plant species that harm or replace the native ones and remove the remains of vegetation to avoid natural flooding in the areas. adjacent.
Accompanied by the mayor of Oroso, Alexánder Doval, and the director of Augas de Galicia, Roi Fernández, the councilor referred to the action started this week in the municipality of Coruñawhere work will be done on a stretch of about 1.2 km of the Carboeiro River, specifically in a flood-prone area, to condition the space and prepare it for winter rains, with the aim of reducing the risk of flooding due to excess branches and vegetation in the area.
The intervention in Oroso is one of the last scheduled by Augas de Galicia for 2024 within this plan, which has a budget of 2.5 million euros and is progressing at a good pace. Ángeles Vázquez indicated that, to date, more than 90% of the program’s budget has been executed—that is, 2.3 million—and intervention has already been made in more than 400 kilometers of the nearly 500 km planned for this year.
Conserve and protect rivers
The actions carried out in 2024 and those planned for 2025 give continuity to those carried out in recent years under the autonomous plan for the conservation of the rivers of the Galicia-Costa demarcation, an effort that the Xunta plans to reinforce in the coming years.
In any case, it is worth remembering that in addition to the periodic maintenance work carried out by Augas de Galicia outside the urban area on the rivers of its basin, there are also the requests that individuals can submit for the removal of trees in river spaceswhich in the case of actions of minimal impact are usually processed quickly through the presentation of a simple responsible declaration.
In fact, the councilor recalled that, to continue simplifying the procedures and streamlining the procedures for the execution of works to prevent flooding In the Galicia-Costa basin, several proposals are being processed within the framework of the Law on fiscal and administrative measures for the 2025 budgets that will help advance in this direction.
Likewise, to deal with possible flooding of the rivers in the district it manages, the Galician hydraulic organization has an action strategy that is developed through preventive measures, the protection of flood-prone areas and restoration work and river conservation such as those already mentioned. In this sense, the Xunta will mobilize more than 35 million euros in 2025 for the planning and execution of various actions to combat flood risks in this basin.
In addition to what is being done right now, the work planned for next year includes the removal of obstacles in the channels, the cleaning of the banks, the removal of fallen trees and a scrupulous control over several invasive species.