The Local Government Commission of Pamplona City Hall has approved the call for tenders for a works contract for the cleaning of urban solid waste (MSW) along the route of the Arga, Sadar and Elorz rivers passing through Pamplona.
The cleanup includes both solid waste and vegetation, tree roots in poor condition, with the potential to generate waste due to their imminent risk of fracture or fall into rivers.
The budget for this work amounts to 99,544.41 euros and will be carried out during this next quarter, before the end of the year. The action is part of action B14 “General river actions”. Cleaning of the DSM of the RUNA 2025 project, for the renaturalization of river environments of Pamplona. RUNA 2025 obtained 2.7 million euros as part of the call for aid from the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge (MITECO), as part of the Recovery, Transformation and Development Plan. Resilience, funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU.
As the city council reports, rivers are accumulation habitats and at the same time transport all types of waste that human activity spreads in fields and cities. Runoff water first, then watercourses, accumulate and transport this waste in the form of suspended solids or mixed with water.
The biggest waste they end up deposited in banks and in the branches of vegetation along the course of rivers. This pollution, which continues over time, is aggravated by river flooding, he added.
During the field work carried out, the presence of MSW was confirmed in the bed of the three riversthroughout its journey.
In addition to the origin of the waste, the presence of more or less riparian vegetation and its growth (gallery forest, islands) encourages the deposition of materials which pollute rivers and obstruct the course of their channels. These plant residues include the roots of trees of the “Populus” genus, which constitute what we call urban “choperas”, contrary to the naturalization sought by the RUNA 2025 project.
FIELD WORK BETWEEN NOVEMBER 2023 AND JANUARY 2024
Actions on existing vegetation will focus on the trees of this genus ‘Populus’ in the section between Landaben industrial zone and Navarra avenue. During fieldwork carried out between November 2023 and January 2024 on the cleaning needs of MSW in the three rivers of Pamplona, trees likely to generate waste were analyzed in this section.
HE They inventoried 357 specimens of this kind of tree and actions have been planned in 197 of them; For another 70 specimens, examination by technical conservation staff was recommended and 90 specimens did not require intervention.
The actions to be carried out include the felling of certain specimens, the pruning of dry branches in others, safety pruning or the establishment dendro-microhabitats.
A dendro-microhabitats It is a morphological characteristic present in a tree, used by certain species during at least part of their life cycle. They can serve as shelters, breeding areas or essential hibernating or feeding grounds for wildlife, the city council said.
The study also analyzes the presence of other types of solid waste. They were detected during three rivers 71 points with inorganic wastewith a displacement estimated at 95 cubic meters. This waste was calculated to occupy an area of 113 square meters, of which 45 m2 corresponded to the Arga River, 39 m2 to the Elorz River and 29 m2 to the Sadar River. In the Elorz and Sadar rivers, a large amount of plastic was detected on the margins of the two canals, accumulated by floods at the end of last year and the beginning of 2024.
