Post by account_disabled on Mar 13, 2024 8:47:25 GMT
This 2024 marks 50 years since the beginning of construction of the Cecebre dam, the infrastructure that guarantees the water supply to A Coruña and its metropolitan area. To commemorate this anniversary, the general director of Emalcsa, Jaime Castiñeira de la Torre, remembers in the following article how the Cecebre dam was created and its relevance, both with regard to the supply of water to the population and for its ecological wealth. . By EMALCSA-UDC CHAIR 1694 readings Image of the construction of the Cecebre dam Image of the construction of the Cecebre dam AUTHOR EMALCSA-UDC CHAIR 02-23-2024 TAGS WATER The metropolitan area associated with the city of A Coruña has a population of 400,000 inhabitants, which represents almost 15% of the Galician population and constitutes the second most relevant area of Galicia. To provide one of the most important services in terms—not only of need, but also of quality and projection—, such as water supply, this territory is supplied from the Mero River basin, whose surface area of 300 km² represents less 1% of that of Galicia. In its origins, at the beginning of the s. XX and when the city was growing, this service was provided from the plant located in Cañás (Carral), 20 km from A Coruña. Later from A Telva (Cambre), from the middle of the 19th century. XX and already with the city and its metropolitan area in full expansion. In 1963, however, the then manager of Aguas de La Coruña, Mr. Ricardo Fernández Cuevas, prepared a report that revealed doubts about the future supply of the city linked to the flows of the Mero River and, specifically , to the low waters of this one.
In those years, the expected consumption in the industrial field, linked to the implementation of the Refinery and the Fertiberia fertilizer factory, as well as the foreseeable increase in residential demands, sponsored a deficit that for Fernández Cuevas would only be possible to cover through the construction of some regulatory facility, that is, a reservoir. At that time two options CZ Leads were considered: At the confluence of the Brexa and Mero rivers, where the drawback was the abundant existing buildings, as well as the Galiñeiros stop. At the confluence of the Barcés river with the Mero, which would allow greater capacity and a higher elevation that would save the train track. The germ of the dam dates back to 1963, the year in which the then manager of Aguas de La Coruña, Ricardo Fernández Cuevas, prepared a report in which he warned about the future water supply to the city due to industrial growth and the increase in population. Furthermore, the manager proposed, in a scenario of growing demand for water, some solutions that were considered exploratory at the time but that today seem very obvious to us, such as reducing the consumption of large industries by proposing alternative solutions.
Among these were mentioned: Recovery and reuse of water from production processes. Seawater desalination. Sewage Treatment. Anecdotally, it must be said that the three have been successfully implemented since the beginning of this century from the beginning of demand management, which has meant a significant cut in the necessary water and has allowed the infrastructures designed in this context continue to be sufficient today despite the great development achieved by the city and its metropolitan area. As a consequence of the report by Ricardo Fernández Cuevas, in 1965, the city council of A Coruña commissioned the most prestigious engineer of his time, Luciano Yordi Carricarte, to draft the project to expand the water supply for Coruña , drafted in record time due to the alarm that the aforementioned report and the water restrictions in the city in summer had caused. The commissioning of the Cecebre dam meant the end of restrictions during the dry season, which had been a source of conflict in the five years prior to its construction, with daily periods of suspension of supply in A Coruña in the summer. The project included the construction of a dam on the Mero river at its confluence with the Barcés, as the manager of Aguas de La Coruña SA had proposed in his previous report, as well as a new DWTP in A Telva (Cambre) for a flow of 800 l/sec. which would complement the 525 l/sec. of the existing plant. The design of this facility anticipated that A Coruña would reach 400,000 inhabitants in a period of 10 years, which obviously did not happen.