José Castelló was eight years old when he began walking on the spots that mark the limits of the rice field, south of La Albufera, where he worked all his life. He inherited the land and business from his father, who had inherited it from his grandfather. “I don’t know what I’m going to have to do. Right now, I am here to denounce this abandonment, because it is abandonment. Then, I will continue as necessary, and if it is through legal channels as well. I’m not just doing this for myself, but for everyone who worked before me. And for my son. Since my grandfather left it to my father and my father left it to me, I will leave it to my son. Afterwards, he can do what he wants or what he can, but it won’t be for me,” he said, walking confidently through the mounds of earth and stone dotted with broken and marked reeds for a month by large breaches.
This is the damage caused by the rising waters when the flood of October 29 suddenly entered the mouth of the Poyo ravine, in the northern part of the lagoon, the part most affected by the floods. From there it is about six kilometers in a straight line, but all kinds of waste have also been deposited in the vegetation of the Castelló mound: remains of plastic pots, beer cans, barrels… “And the other day, I found a thermometer. “, he assures.
Their main concern, and that of all affected rice farmers, is that if the spots are not repaired in time, the damage will be even greater. “If they don’t come and see it, they won’t understand it. I had never seen him before. I’m 53 years old and I haven’t seen or heard it from my father or grandfather. These last 25 meters of clod are destroyed and when I start to lower the water to empty the field and sow, it will burst,” he explains. And without weeds, no planting, no control of the irrigation, no rice “But I called the technician from Valencia City Hall the other day and she told me that she was already aware of it, but that we had to make do because there was nothing. no money for here.”
The Town Hall owns La Albufera and agreed this Friday to allocate 8.5 million euros, through an emergency contract, to cleaning the most affected areas of the lake.
The figure and forecasts presented by the councilor responsible for Albufera, José Gosálbez, of Vox, essentially coincide with the conclusions of the first evaluation report prepared by the Devesa-Albufera Service, dependent on the town hall. The document highlights “the exceptional scale of the flood” and “the enormous damage caused to the natural and agricultural area”, with an increase in the water level of 10 to 110 centimeters, which implies, according to technicians, that 120 hectometers are entered. cube of water in less than 24 hours, which is 50 to 70 percent more than what happens in a year.
The planned actions are concentrated to the north of the lagoon, where the marshes of Massanassa, Catarroja and Alfafar – at the opposite end of the Tancat de Rochet, where the Pinedo rice field is located – were covered by a tide of mud which washed away everything what had been taken away during its passage through the urbanized areas of the communes: furniture, cylinders, drums of chemicals of all kinds, refrigerators, tires, bales of pressed plastic…
The trace of this polluting culture is everywhere as you enter La Albufera through the port of Catarroja. Here, José Luis Cases has just recovered one of the boats that the flood had sent adrift. By climbing onto the deck and using a long hanger, he brings the boat closer to the quay, also marked by the passage of floodwaters. With other colleagues from the Latin sailing club, the traditional boats of the lagoon, he has been trying for days to repair the damage.
“They don’t let us go out now because they’re still looking for people… We went out the first few days to accompany the firefighters from Ferrol but then they wouldn’t let us,” says this resigned Ford worker who lives in Sedaví and is now at ERTE and whose whole family is affected by DANA in Massanassa.
The panorama that can be admired along the narrow roads that cross the rice fields to Tancat de Pipa is dotted with masses of reeds, bushes, large trunks, encrusted with remnants of plastic, pill blisters… Looking in the distance, towards the Massanassa marshes, we see a huge blue metal bin planted in the middle of the field.
The extent of the damage is enormous and this is why many here believe that this first plan announced by the municipal council is more than insufficient. “Because it seems that it only includes repairing the motas north of La Albufera. But all the motas were affected because the lake overflowed above the rice fields, covered the motas that were underwater for a while and eroded again when the water receded.” , explains Javier Jiménez Romo, a resident of the area and he is also a biologist who has worked in the lagoon for years. After helping as a volunteer in flooded villages, he has been working for days to start talking seriously about the consequences that DANA has had on the already fragile ecosystem that is La Albufera. Consequences which, according to him, are not treated as they should.
“We lack the relevant administrations at the state, regional and local level to come together to first decide on immediate actions, for example confining the waste, erecting barriers to prevent it from being dispersed and, a month later, are not even put. Then, have a single diagnosis, and then, a single action plan Because what we are seeing so far are shock plans with partial diagnoses carried out by. each administration and not complete”, declares Jiménez, unable to contain an indignation that permeates everything he says.
Jiménez lives in the El Saler area adjacent to La Albufera and says that since the flood he looks at the lagoon “like a physical person who saved us” because it is thanks to the wetlands that cushion the assaults of the water that the coast the towns were not flooded. “What they do is manage information to, in a quick and rapid way, give the impression that a lot of things are being done, which is true, but in a completely uncoordinated way and without this diagnosis, which “We can only have this by talking to farmers, environmental groups, universities, hunters and fishermen…” he adds.
To be taken into account, to be listened to, this is what the fishermen of El Palmar are asking for, the town which stands on a sort of peninsula in the southern part of the lagoon, and which until a month ago was the one of its main tourist destinations. “Now it’s a ghost town. Because on top of that, rumors circulated that there was a bad smell here, that it had been flooded, and no,” says Amparo Aleixandre, secretary of the El Palmar Fishing Community, sitting in a room on the upper floor of the establishment, where for the past month the only fish available have been farmed eels.
“We are in a situation of total shutdown. A month without being able to go out to work. Until the search for the missing stops, we cannot leave. I know this because I just spoke with a technician that I know and trust,” he explains, emphasizing that the information comes to him through informal contacts. The situation is critical, but he assures that it was they who had to call the Ministry of the Environment to explain it: “We contacted them, not them, as we hoped.” Of the 300 fishermen who once existed, only around 40 remain and many combine fishing with tourist or agricultural activities. But now everything has stopped.
“It’s not about each administration starting to do its part of the conspiracy. The point is, you need to come up with a general plan. And what is not normal is that a ravine like this ends in the La Albufera lake. If we say that this is a maximum protection lake that is part of the Natura 2000 network, we must guarantee that this does not happen again. If we have always asked for something, especially fishermen, it is water of quality and quantity. And this one has everything except that,” explains Aleixandre, who explains that they ordered their own analyzes to see the state of the waters: “They come out with excrement, which is suitable, but they are with excrement. And of course, in the end, we put the eel here in the drinking water to purge it and it is cleaned and cooked. But that’s what stands out. And how can we not reveal everything that is being thrown into the ravine right now?
González gets emotional when she remembers the days when she would go out with her husband to help out in the streets of Catarroja, mobilizing the machines her family had to work in the rice fields. “Here, there has been no more generational change and, now, we are going to finish killing him. The fishing community of El Palmar is 775 years old. Well, I think that’s the end, unfortunately. Because in Covid, we continue to work, but I don’t know if we will endure it,” he said in a broken voice.
He doesn’t know if what they have planned in the City Hall plan is a lot or a little. “It depends on what is going to be done. But if road paving companies are going to come in, will they have the machinery to do it? » he asks. The companies responsible for cleaning La Albufera, according to information published this Friday by the Town Hall, are the construction companies Rover and Becsa and the service company specializing in water management, Pavagua.
“What I can tell you is that at the moment we are the only company that has amphibious machines to clean La Albufera. Furthermore, I would tell you that in Spain we are the only company that has four different models of amphibious machines. And the companies that received the specifications are calling me these days to find out what needs to be done,” explains Manel Vela, owner of the small company who has been working on the maintenance of the lagoon for years. Vela believes that the resources mentioned are not sufficient and that specialized machines are needed which should be sought abroad, for example in the Netherlands.
“And you have to do it right, otherwise it will be shit here for years,” he says. Vela is one of the few to have a complete view of the damage, as he was also able to enter the western area of the lagoon where waste accumulates and where he accompanied the agents of the Special Underwater Activities Group of the Civil Guard in the search for the missing.
“In August, when the vegetation covers everything, people will say that nothing happened here, that we have a magnificent lake. When everything there is will stay at the bottom. The shit will be there. And we had already had a very big pollution problem before,” adds this technician who has worked on excavators for 35 years. He says he can’t stop talking, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to sleep: “For me, the Albufera is like a mother.”
