What the fire took in Tenerife

To get an idea of ​​the magnitude of this infrastructure, it is one of the longest on the Island, with a flow of 1,600 pipes of water per hour (768,000 liters/hour) and a length of 24 kilometers. It runs through rugged terrain at a height that reaches 1,038 meters above sea level at its starting point, in the area known as El Orégano, between the municipalities of Los Realejos and La Orotava. At the end of its route in the area of ​​Los Dornajos, in La Victoria at 775 meters above sea level, the distribution is carried out through other pipelines, such as the Victoria-Santa Cruz canal and the Los Dornajos-Los Baldíos transfer, that the initial project that planned to extend it to Santa Cruz was never completed. The most inaccessible and steep section is precisely the slope of the La Orotava Valley, affected by the fire, making it impossible to work in safe conditions.

The management of this hydraulic infrastructure corresponds to the Canal Aguamansa Santa Cruz water community. Your manager, Francisco Javier Gonzalez Carrillo points out that “from the first moment the safety of the personnel in charge of the repair has been prioritized. These have been moments of great concern and action has only been taken when the technicians indicated it and always with the accompaniment and under the instructions of the firefighters. The situation now remains critical since the recent rains have increased the instability of the terrain. “We have been offering an essential service efficiently and without water losses during driving for 60 years, but this has been a natural disaster that has caused an unexpected situation.”

«In the short term, we can only act as we have been doing until now, fixing the successive breaks caused by the continuous landslides and falling trees. In the medium and long term, a series of actions have been proposed to the administration that involve more tunnels and the securing of the slopes that are currently very unstable due to the fire and the rains. Therefore, we consider that it is time to look for a definitive solution that avoids putting the supply to the population at risk, taking into account that this will not be immediate, given the complexity of the work and the area where they have to be carried out.

The canal at that point is embedded in a completely vertical wall for three kilometers and without the possibility of access with specialized vehicles or machinery, so the staff has only been able to carry out manual work by accessing it on foot from Aguamansa, in La Orotava. , or from Santa Úrsula. During the fire and to date, there have been more than fifteen breaks and obstructions that have been resolved along the way, but the situation is currently unsustainable. Although 1,000 pipes have been diverted to a lower canal, there is still a lack of much water that previously supplied the area. The latest rains, long awaited by everyone and so timely to extinguish the fire, have caused more landslides, further preventing pedestrian access to be able to clear tons of debris that bury the canal in the most inaccessible area. So much so that the workers who are cleaning up the area so that the work can be carried out safely had to be transported by helicopter.

Since the construction of this canal, in the 60s of the 20th century, a similar situation had never been experienced. «The slope has been consumed by flames and the canal, despite being an infrastructure capable of resisting fire, has not been able to withstand the soil conditions. Although the construction of this canal was complicated by its geographical location, now we find ourselves with the aggravating effect of the effects of fire, which presents us with another totally different hillside model, without vegetation and without the capacity to support it.”

The Canal Aguamansa Santa Cruz water community was established in 1963 with the purpose of conveying the surplus of illuminated waters in the La Orotava Valley to other areas whose resources were scarcer. At the initiative of the Valley’s own water communities, construction began on a completely covered canal that has transported up to a total of 3,250 water pipes per hour. Its performance until the fateful fire has always been 99%, with losses that have not exceeded 1% compared to water losses in other supply networks in some municipalities, which reach 50%. Despite the decrease in water resources of the Island’s aquifer, the canal continues to receive a large amount of water that comes from 19 galleries from La Guancha to La Orotava. «To give us an idea, it is the equivalent of the Northern Highway, but for the transport of water and without the current queues, of vital importance for the supply of the municipalities of the La Orotava Valley, the Acentejo region and the Metropolitan area. », adds Francisco Javier.

The contributions of the communities and the transport fee paid by its users – municipalities and companies, mainly – allow the sustainability of the canal which, as a water community, does not distribute benefits and its income is allocated entirely to the canal. Now, the scenario has become complicated and this catastrophic area in legal terms will require a significant investment that allows the canal to continue providing this vital service.

The history of Tenerife is closely linked to the search for water in the subsoil. It has not been an easy task. Going into the heart of the Island to find a vital resource such as water has meant, in many cases, risking their lives and a lot of financial effort on the part of those who risked all their savings, at the expense of losing them if the expected result was not achieved. . Even so, we have 1,600 kilometers of galleries on the Island with their corresponding network of pipes and channels to reach agricultural surfaces and urban centers. As in the case of the Aguamansa Canal, the orography of our land has meant that most of them are in places that are difficult to access, but it has been human expertise, together with the need to obtain water, that has allowed us to open every morning the tap.