Santa Cruz de Tenerife 22 Mar. (Europa Press) –
The Cabildo de Tenerife, through the Insular Water Council (CIATF), will allocate 5 million euros for the refurbishment, upkeep, and modernisation of the Northern Canal, a hydraulic infrastructure stretching 39 kilometres that supplies water from the municipality of Los Realejos to Santa Cruz.
Moreover, it also services the conduits of the Victoria Santa Cruz channel, Dornajos-Los Baldíos conduit, and Channel Unión Victoria-La Matanza.
The projects will be carried out by the public enterprise Tragsa and are expected to take three years to complete, as stated by the island institution in a release on Saturday.
The president of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Rosa Dávila, highlighted that this initiative had been demanded for years, as the infrastructure is experiencing deterioration; she noted that these works aim to decrease water loss and enhance service delivery.
“This is a significant initiative that will ultimately benefit thousands of individuals,” she remarked.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Natural Environment, Sustainability, Security and Emergencies, Blanca Pérez, emphasised the significance of this investment, amounting to 5 million euros, which, along with additional initiatives, aims to ensure a “more efficient and sustainable” use of water resources.
“One of the goals of the Insular Water Council is to achieve greater efficiency through the incorporation of new technologies for leak detection and the modernisation of management systems, which are essential components of this project,” the minister stated.
Additionally, she mentioned that structural rehabilitation and enhancements in accessibility will guarantee the longevity of this crucial infrastructure for the coming decades.
PROJECTS
The planned improvements for the Northern Canal encompass upgrading signage, structural repair of the components and materials of the channel to extend their lifespan, risk prevention measures that may compromise their stability, and the stabilisation of slopes along with the reinforcement of tunnels traversed by the canal.
In addition, personnel dedicated to management and maintenance will be inducted, and the management systems will be updated by introducing new technologies to enhance water control, monitoring, and telemanagement services, aimed at improving the overall efficiency of canal water management.
The Tenerife council reminds that since the summer of 2024, the Aguas Insular Council has heightened maintenance and corrective actions.
They also report that vegetation clearance tasks have been undertaken to ease access and visual inspections of many sections of the canal, removal of roots from the interior that hindered hydraulic capacity, repairs of structural cracks, identification of illegal connections, and the replacement of numerous lids to mitigate risks.
Consequently, there are currently flow measurements per sections with the cooperation of channel management firms, aimed at more accurately detecting leaks.
To facilitate this, the innovative ADCP method (Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler) is being used for flow capacity measurement, a pioneering technological approach in the Canary Islands.
