Line of action:

Urban environments

Status:

En ejecución

Location:

Andújar, Jaén (Andalusia)

Execution date:

2022

Duration:

01/01/2023 - 31/12/2025

Total budget:

€2,725,236.09

Amount of aid from the Biodiversity Foundation:

€2,588,974.28

Coordinating entity:

Andújar City Council

Andújar (Jaén), a town cradled in a meander of the Guadalquivir, is one of the few large population centres in Andalusia with a greater risk of floods to the indirect population (36,000 inhabitants) in return periods of less than 10 years. (Area of Significant Potential Risk ES050_APSFR_AG069) Problem: Different factors intervene in the elevation of this risk: high erosion due to olive cultivation in the basin, reduction of the floodplain due to protection motes, urban growth in the 70s and 80s, elevation of the base level of the river bed due to sedimentation in a meander, narrowing of the channel by 3 bridges and a dam in the urban section, the ebb effect of the mouths of streams and the Jándula River, the hydrological management of the upstream reservoirs, and the accumulation of sludge from the Marmolejo reservoir and dam located close downstream. The Guadalquivir River and its riverside forest as it passes through Andújar has been deteriorating in recent decades, losing biodiversity and landscape quality, and plant functionality. The mounds raised by the Basin Organization have become on its right bank an element of intense citizen use used as a pedestrian path. The diagnostic study of floods and hydromorphological quality carried out for this project confirms the risk of flooding and the impact on active urban areas.

The project aims to restore the riparian vegetation of the banks of the Guadalquivir River as it passes through the municipality of Andújar, to reduce the risk of flooding in the city and to connect the Guadalquivir River with the inhabitants of the City of Andújar and its region. The Andújar Organic River Park, in this first phase, will redirect the intimate neighbourhood between river and city, reducing the risk of flooding in the urban environment and solving the historical problem of emotional, physical and visual barriers that hinder the understanding of the river as a natural place, with a rich landscape and sensory, and for eco-interpretive and inclusive public use.

Some of the specific actions contemplated by this project are:

• Update of the flood emergency plan.
• Recovery of the natural hydrological profile.
• Reactivation of old riverbeds.
• Ecological restoration of riparian forest, according to native vegetation series.
• Environmental education actions.