Several roads are dammed and there are major traffic jams; the roof of the La Vaguada shopping center falls; More than 100 facilities at the La Paz hospital are flooded and several Madrid metro stations are unusable because they fill to the top with water. These scenes - and others like them - are repeated in Madrid every time a strong storm arrives. What can be done? Are there solutions?
For Sergio Zubelzu, professor of Hydraulics, Hydrology, and Irrigation at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, "sanitation systems have a limit and we are exceeding it." The record of 107 liters per square meter that Madrid had yesterday is the highest in the last 50 years. This caused chaos in the capital.
In Zubelzu's opinion, "Madrid's sanitation systems are not prepared to receive that volume of rain." To which he adds: "It is a design problem, not a maintenance problem." However, he clarifies that "Madrid is not an isolated case; no city in Spain is prepared to receive such a large amount of water. The problem is that since Madrid is such an extensive city and the capital is more striking."
In the opinion of this expert on the subject, large cities like Madrid "must carry out a deep reflection on the climate change model and predictions, since we have been seeing very intense and concentrated rains in recent years." One solution would be to review the sanitation system, but "it is very expensive because holes would have to be opened throughout the city," he says.
There are also other options on the table such as improving storm tanks, which are the tanks installed before the treatment plants. Or laminate avenues more efficiently with infiltration ditches or pavements with, supposedly, a high rain infiltration capacity.
Nowadays, when it rains so intensely and deeply, "the pipes are not able to collect all the water," he says. In his opinion, the most realistic and least expensive solution is to "retain and laminate the water at source, before it reaches the pipes." To do this, the water would have to be stored, for example with ponds in green areas, so that the water goes more slowly to the pipes, not so suddenly, and thus they do not collapse."
In his opinion, "it is not an infrastructure problem, but rather it is necessary to change the paradigm of rain management in cities so that it moves towards greater sustainability."
