Riverbed of Turia, why it's a garden.

[activi]

I didn't know where i could post this exactly as it's not related directly with fallas, but with valencia.

Has anybody of you asked why you can use the old riverbed, now gardens of turia river, to meet and try to make it deeper with your fireworks parties?
:cheesy:

why the river was diverted from the city?

Here is link to the forum of skyscrapercity with an interenting thread of the 50 anniversay of the last flooding of river Turia in the city.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=531993

This last flooding was terrible, caused serious damage in most of the city and 100 dead. Since then started a new plan for diverting the river called 'plan sur' (south plan). My mother suffered this flooding and talked me about how terrible it was.
Being many of you dutch will know how terrible floodings can be.

The river should be diverted in a new riverbed by the south of the city with capacity for ocasional fllodings, the old riverbed should be used for other things, among the projects(in the 60's) was building a highway along the riverbed... thank god it was never carried out, and the project for gardens was made instead.

The south plan took several years to be made, the new riverbed have never used since the project finished (also because there were made several dam to regulate the levels of the river). Valencia had to pay extra cash for many services (as postal service) in order to pay the south plan for many many years.

The water of the river is used to the last drop for irrigation in the surrounding farm fields of valencia (called 'la huerta' or 'l'horta' best farmland of spain), that's why the new riverbed appears always dry.

East coast of spain have risk of heavy rains in september and october that can result in floodings.

well, the post is in spanish, but with many pictures, you can use the google translator to translate it into english and get an idea of how the flooding was and the projects of south plan.

 

[Vavoom]

Although I already knew quite a bit about the history of the river Turia, it is still very interesting to see those old pictures. I didn't realise that the flooding had been so bad in Valencia. However, the graph with the relative heights of some streets clearly explains why the flooding was so bad.

Although the new (diverted) river bed looks terrible, I bet it works very well. It doesn't have to be beautiful, because it's just a storm-drain. It might have been used recently, because of the heavy rainfall in the past 2 or 3 weeks.

The old river bed is amazing and I'm enjoying it every time I see it. Thank God it hasn't been changed into a highway, but in a beautiful long-stretched park.
Nowadays it's one of the landmarks of Valencia.

 

[activi]

Seems that the new river bed have been used a few times since it was built.I don't know if the last weeks was used, despite heavy rains a couple of weeks ago and this week.

Tony was very lucky to get to valencia just in the week of good weather in the middle of the two weeks of terrible weather.

Somedy in the thread i posted before talked about the possibility of a big flooding coming into the old riverbed, but that's not like to happen, the new reiverbed will be enough for a flooding like that of 1957. So guys you have riverbed for years to make fireworks meeting, or "make the river deeper" meeting!! :smile1:

But it will not be enough for a big flooding like the big last one in 1982 in the river jucar, south of Valencia province that was twice the turia flooding of 57 (and swept away the dam of Tous that caused even more damage)

That kind of rains aren't unusual in late september and october.