Albufeira saw parts of its downtown area flooded on Thursday
Last week’s bad weather did not cause as much damage as initially feared in Albufeira, where a surge of heavy rain led to floods in its downtown area on Thursday (November 14).
Public infrastructures sustained only minor issues and there have been no reports of businesses struggling to recover from the effects of the rainfall, local mayor José Carlos Rolo told Lusa news agency.
“The public damage was minimal, almost negligible,” said Rolo, adding that affected areas, such as damaged pavements, were promptly repaired.
As for private property, no formal requests for assistance have reached the municipality. “No one has come forward, so surely they are handling the issues themselves,” Rolo stated.
The mayor attributed some of the flooding to ongoing construction works on the mid-west slope drainage collector. He explained that if the collector project been completed, the flooding in the town centre could have been avoided. The project, part of Albufeira’’s €21 million General Drainage Plan, aims to prevent floods in the town centre, which have become prevalent in recent years and were most serious in November 2015.
Meanwhile, the east collector is still to be built, although the project has already been drawn up, as well as a tunnel, which “is very expensive,” being budgeted at “around €40 million” and for which funding has not yet been secured, explained José Carlos Rolo.
According to the mayor, the work on Albufeira’s western collector is around halfway complete, and is expected to “remove the rainwater which falls on the western slope of the town centre to another catchment area” and which “currently flows into the centre of Albufeira”.
Elsewhere in Albufeira, upgrades near INATEL reduced flooding in a historically affected area, and a pumping station installed three years ago at Praça dos Pescadores now redirects water from below sea level into the ocean.
Source: LUSA
