The City Council is reinforcing the cleaning of scuppers and sewerage networks in the municipality in the points and areas with the highest risk of flooding due to heavy rainfall.
The Deputy Mayor of the Services and External Control area, Blas Ruzafa, explained that these works, included in the Maintenance and Preventive Cleaning Plan of the Sewerage System, are carried out to guarantee the maximum hydraulic capacity of the network in times of heavy rain. .
Although these works, carried out by the water service concessionaire (Hidralia), are carried out throughout the year, Ruzafa has indicated that they intensify during the autumn months.
Specifically, as indicated by the municipal official, so far this year Hidralia has acted in more than 100 kilometers of the sewage network and has cleaned more than 11,400 scuppers, taking into account that in some of these elements it acts twice year.
In this regard, it is necessary to highlight the complexity and extension of the sewerage network of the Estepona municipality, which has 435 kilometers of sewage and rainwater networks.
Scuppers are the urban elements that collect rainwater and divert it to the sewer network. That is why it is vitally important that they are kept clean, since when they become clogged with residues carried by the water from the rainfall, their drainage capacity is reduced.
The service concessionaire allocates teams of its own operators and specialized contracts supervised by technical personnel who use adapted vehicles to clean the grids and their branches.
Regarding the intensive autumn campaign, priority has been given to reinforcing work in the areas near the urban area where there are more concentrations of water due to the effects of rain, such as Real and Caridad streets, and avenues San Lorenzo, Andalusia and Spain, Calle San Roque, El Carmen and Juan Carlos I; as well as in some areas of the suburbs such as Pernet avenue and México street.
On the other hand, Blas Ruzafa has highlighted that the digitization process that Hidralia has carried out in recent years in the 435 linear kilometers of the sewer system is of great importance because it allows the necessary maintenance and cleaning operations to be planned in an optimal and more efficient way. the network, as well as the management of all the actions that operators have to carry out on the ground in the different infrastructures of the sewerage network.
Thanks to the real-time monitoring of the entire municipal network, it is possible to observe exactly at which points the intervention is most urgent in order to establish a correct order of priorities when acting.