The Sustainable City Area of the Puerto de la Cruz City Council will install an early warning system that will measure the rise in sea level caused by the effects of climate change in order to avoid flooding.
This is stated by councilor David Hernández (ACP), who affirms that this is one of the priorities of the area he directs and that is why he joined the European Union’s Life program last term to work on caring for the environment and climate action.
For this planning, in July 2022, the external monitoring team of the aforementioned program visited the city establishing the spaces where the actions will take place and direct intervention will be established in San Telmo and Martiánez where the cameras will be located to model the sheet of water.
For this reason, and after a meeting with the technicians responsible for the Government of the Canary Islands and the project, the procedures have begun to establish the possible dates for Fihac (Cantabria Environmental Hydraulics Institute Foundation) to carry out a bathymetry of the coast as soon as possible. Calibrate your instruments and find a “window” in which the sea state allows it.
Thus, in the winters of 2024-2025 and 2025-2026, the current meter and the camera will be installed that will serve to establish early warning in specific areas to predict changes on the Portuense coast and act accordingly to minimize the effects of the rise in temperature. sea level. With the installation of this tool, the city would become the second town in Tenerife to have this system after Garachico.
“The data provided by these tools will determine the different actions, hard or soft, necessary to protect the municipality and citizens in the event of a risk on the local coastal front,” says Hernández.
In this sense, attention will be focused on the coasts of Punta Brava and Martiánez, although other studies carried out by the state government confirm that the entire coastline could be at risk except for the area that protects the current dock breakwater.
“From the Department we propose a series of soft actions that can guide us once the early warning system is installed, such as new access protocols to the dock esplanade, as well as other dissuasive measures, both urban planning and the organization of urban traffic and pedestrian, in cases of maritime storms,” says the mayor.
