In it La Albufera Natural Parklocated just 10 kilometers from the city of Valencia, is located what is considered the largest natural lake in Spain. It is also one of the protected areas that houses the most ecological wealththanks so much to your marsh habitat plagued with rice fields, as well as its situation as place of passage for many species of birds throughout the year.
Emerging 1.8 million years ago during the Pleistocene, in more recent times the Romans named this huge coastal lagoon with the name of The Pond of Nacarum (Pearl Lake), as can be sensed by the iridescent reflections it gives off at dusk. However, They will be the Arabs of Al-Andalusvery present in the Levante area during the Late Middle Ages, those who will be in charge of giving your final name: al-buhayra – o small seain Spanish -.
Environmental ground zero
More than a month has passed since the flood and four people have still not been found. While the tracking work continues, all activities that took place in this natural space are suspended.a situation that especially affects the fishing community in the area, although it has also contributed to slowing down the cleaning and recovery work.
The magnitude of the human tragedy, the greatest in recent memory of Spain, has left the environmental catastrophe in the background, whose true dimension is now beginning to be discovered. The Valencia Albufera, an ecosystem of incalculable ecological value, has also become one of the great victims of the catastrophe caused by DANA.
The “environmental ground zero«, the place that received the full impact of the flood. The northern limit of the Albufera is a space occupied mainly by rice fields, and is delimited by the V-31 highway, known as Pista de Silla, which connects the city of Valencia with the region of L’Horta Sud. This road marks the border of the natural park, and next to it, on the urban margin, Numerous shopping centers and industrial estates are being built, that they have spit thousands of tons of waste on rice fields.
The cleaning work of the natural space began in the first days of November, driven above all by specific actions by volunteers, but the pace since then has been very slow, since initial efforts have focused on addressing the most human emergency, that of razed urban areas. Although circumstances seem to have given a slight respite, because Now a group of soldiers is removing the largest garbage from the rice fields.
Potentially hazardous waste
However, what is most worrying is not this type of waste, but those that can barely be seen. There are lubricants, solvents, hydrocarbons, mechanical products, cleaning products, components of industrial activities that many times you do not even know what they are, but they have risk pictograms for the aquatic environment, and then, above all, what stands out a lot are pharmaceutical productsthe water is black in many points, and as it evaporates or filters into the ground, we see that the sediment it leaves behind is a very dark color, so we can think that these are products of a very serious condition. In any case, we are talking about potentially dangerous waste..
In addition to these more or less liquid spills, there are thousands of small doses of medicines that have been scattered over kilometers, and that have become integrated into the terrain.. Its withdrawal now seems practically impossibleif not with a deep cleaning that would require an enormous material and economic effort.
This is not a job of managing a natural space like the one we had before the DANA. This has been an environmental catastrophe whose scope should not be minimizedand the first thing it requires is to all get together because it is something that escapes us if we face it separately, the three administrations – Valencia City Council, Generalitat and central Government have to coordinate with universities and groups such as farmers, fishermen and environmentalists to reach a consensus precautionary and emergency measures.
Then, in a second phase, it is necessary to issue a single diagnosis that tells where we are and how to proceedwith short, medium and long-term actions. Furthermore, based on that diagnosis.
You can’t do things quickly, try to remove only the fat, and assume that the Albufera is going to be a garbage park in the coming decades where waste emerges from time to time in the northern marsh or there are areas where rice cannot be grown.
One of the three great wetlands of Spain
The Albufera de Valencia is considered one of the three great wetlands in Spain, along with Doñana and the Ebro Delta; and covers an area of approximately 21,000 hectares, of which the majority – about 15,000 – are occupied by rice fields. During the last decades, this natural space has faced intense human pressure due to the urbanization, tourism and agricultural and industrial expansion in its surroundingswhich has caused a water pollutionin addition to the degradation of their ecosystemsamong other negative effects. The DANA on October 29 could be the final blow to this chronic situation of weakness.
However, there is one important factor that can help in the repair process: Wetlands are characterized by their great capacity for resilience, which allows them to cushion the environmental pressures exerted on them, in addition to recovering more quickly..
But everything has a limit and this recovery is not going to happen without very hard work on the part of the administrations, the people who live there, the companies and everyone.. The Albufera de Valencia as a wetland is capable of rebounding, because wetlands are very grateful ecosystems.
What has happened is not simply a flood, because it has had an extraordinary force of sediment removal, and The skin of the Albufera of Valencia has changedso to speak, stirring everything both on land and in water. The Albufera of Valencia is a lake that was already contaminatedeven by heavy metals from nearby industries. So, any movement like that of the DANA, makes those wastes that were very still at the bottom available again.
Furthermore, to that is added all the pollution that could have come not only from cars, which is the most scandalous, but from all types of industrial substances, from the car batteries themselves, brake fluid and later, all the chemical products that were in the companies.
The Poyo ravine does not flow into the sea, but rather into the Albufera lake in Valencia
The most voluminous DANA waste has been scattered in the channel of this rambla and in the vicinity of its mouthespecially in the Catarroja and Massanassa area. Although to a lesser extent, the remains carried by the flood have also reached the lagoon, but The natural rolling capacity of this wetland has cushioned its impact.
Besides, There is another level of pollution, which is all the waste that has reached the Mediterranean through the new channel of the Turia. The heaviest elements remained in the channel and at the mouth of this river, while the floating elements left the open sea, although the currents later returned them to the coast. The beaches are now covered by millions of cubic meters of garbage, especially plant waste, along about 30 kilometers, from the south of the city of Valencia to Cullera, and even beyond.
The beaches of the Valencia Albufera son essential habitats for dune systems that act as natural barriers against coastal erosion. These sand formations also provide shelter for native flora and fauna species.. All this dune system is protectedfirst because they are representative habitats of high conservation valueand second because They provide shelter to threatened species, such as the snowy plover. Furthermore, specifically, They are nesting places for sea turtles.
The amount of plastic waste that has reached the beach is much less than in other placesand that, since it is mainly plant waste, no great damage has been done to these high-value ecosystems.
On the overall effect of DANA in the Valencia Albuferahas caused a tremendous impact at the level of waste and pollution; although apparently there is not going to be a big problem in that sense, because the water has flowed a lot, A lot of contaminant has entered but it is very dissolved.
The ecosystem service that wetlands provide, since they provide us with security and reduce damage from disasters. When the flood reaches the Valencia Albuferasuddenly finds itself with thousands of hectares over which to spread water, which greatly reduces the speed and also relieves the circulating flow upstream, such as the towns in the south of the park, such as El Saler, Pinedo or El Palmar, which have practically not even heard about it.
Break in fishing
In one of these towns, El Palmar, is one of the oldest fishing guilds in Spain, whose foundation dates back to the 13th century. The fishing they practice is an activity considered artisanal, and is fully integrated into the natural park..
The fishermen of El Palmar, specialized in the capture of species such as eel, mullet or blue crab, They have been more than a month without being able to carry out his professional activityalthough in this case The stoppage is not directly due to the environmental impact of DANA, but to the search for missing persons that is being carried out in the lake.
The eel season, one of the most anticipated of the year, started last November 1st, after the lifting of the ban, but they have not yet been able to start fishing for this fish, so for the moment they have been left without one of their main sources of income.
Regarding the environmental impact that the lake and aquatic fauna may have suffered, the secretary of the fishermen of El Palmar assures that we still do not have any information.although they state that on their own they have done analysis, and they come out within the acceptable parameters for human consumption.
The Albufera de Valencia cannot be treated like just another landfill. It’s a lake of maximum international protectionand before the flood it was already suffering from spills, but now this situation has become impossible, especially in the area where the Poyo ravine flows out.
All the mud that has come down the ravine is going to settle in the Valencia Albuferait’s not going to go away, and you have to clean it, There are voices that support the dredging of the lake and voices that oppose it,.
Threatened rice fields
The rising waters caused by the flood, together with the wind storm that devastated the area during the meteorological phenomenon, seriously damaged the motas, which are the masses of land that in this case separate the lake from the crop fields, acting as a protective barrier.
At the end of October, after the harvest, farmers flood their rice fields with water, and remain so until it is drained to replant the cereal, in February or March. Now, the water in the rice field, whose level is much higher than usual due to DANA, counteracts the pressure exerted by the lake.