Line of action:

Urban environments

Status:

En ejecución

Location:

Burlada, Navarre (Autonomous Community of Navarre)

Execution date:

2022

Duration:

01/10/2022 - 31/12/2025

Total budget:

€1,733,401.13

Amount of aid from the Biodiversity Foundation:

€1,646,731.07

Coordinating entity:

Burlada City Council

Recurrently in recent years (2013-2021), Burlada has been subjected to the damaging effects of the floods of the Arga River. Specifically, on December 10, 2021, a large part of its urban fabric saw how water flooded streets, homes, garages, businesses, endowment and sports buildings with damages valued at more than € 4,000,000. The Arga rivers and its tributary Ultzama are unregulated rivers, whose headwaters are affected by aqueous and snowy rainfall. The sudden climatic changes that they have been suffering lately cause the sum of flows from rains and thaws; a fact that has altered the traffic regime of avenues in Burlada.

The city of Burlada is in a situation of great vulnerability in the face of the floods of the Arga River, which are increasingly frequent and intense and which had their maximum exponent on December 10, 2021, when the waters flooded the urban fabric with great depths (3.20 meters), causing damage of more than €4M. The project will provide a detailed understanding of the river problems generated by climate change, optimising the river’s current hydraulic operating system, to allow a transition to a safer and more environmentally balanced model that will involve the relocation of the current defences.

Some of the actions that stand out from this project are:

• Setback of the motte of the pedestrian promenade of the Arga river park to increase the drainage capacity of the Areta bridge and revegetation of the bank.
• Incorporation of the Nogalera park into the river ecosystem: setback of the Burlada motte and permeabilization of the Old Burlada bridge.
• Self-protection actions in flood-prone buildings in Burlada.
• Detailed hydraulic study of the Arga River as it passes through Burlada.