The City Council will commission the water and sewerage service concessionaire to draft the execution project within a maximum period of three months.
The municipality of Benidorm will have a municipal forest fire fighting network with purified water that will allow it to act much more efficiently in particularly sensitive areas with significant forest cover. To this end, the Water Cycle Department will commission Hidraqua, the concessionaire of the drinking water and sewerage service, to draft the execution project for the aforementioned municipal network within a maximum period of three months.
The proposal by councillor José Ramón González de Zárate will be addressed and ruled on in the next Urban Planning information committee and approved by the Local Government Board and the project will be financed with the economic resources available in the drinking water and sewerage contract.
It is worth remembering that on July 15, the Governing Board agreed to ask Hidraqua to draft the Master Plan for the Municipal Service for the Reuse of Purified Water in the city, the objective of which is to increase the consumption of water for compatible uses within the municipality. One of these uses will be the use of purified water to supply the network of fire hydrants that will be distributed throughout the city, "with special importance to those that will be used to meet the possible demand of forest areas such as El Moralet, El Murtal, L'Aigüera alta, the Séquia Mare Park or the surroundings of the PORN of Serra Gelada, etc. forest areas close to the urban area and essential for Benidorm" said Mayor Toni Pérez.
The mayor also pointed out that, very close to and even crossing these areas, "there is a pipeline for reusing treated water from the WWTP, which has sufficient flow and pressure to provide the basic firefighting service that would be required in the event of an emergency."
In this regard, Toni Pérez has highlighted the “urgency” of undertaking this action and has argued that “the drought period in which we find ourselves gives these green areas a high potential risk of fire”. This is why Hidraqua has been asked to draft the project, regardless of whether it is contemplated in the aforementioned Master Plan for the Municipal Service for the Reuse of Waste Water “so that it can be carried out in the shortest possible time”.
The project requested from Hidraqua must consider several conditions. Thus, it must be coordinated and adapted to the instructions given by the Local Security and Emergency Corps (Firefighters, Civil Protection, Local Police, etc.) and those given by the Community of Irrigators of the Canal Bajo del Algar, which is the owner of the reuse pipeline that would supply the planned fire-fighting network.
The scope of the project will also include all green areas, parks, forested areas or undeveloped areas that could be served safely, with the necessary flow and pressure from the treated water reuse pipeline. The future distribution network will also have to be installed preferably along existing roads and avoiding affecting forested areas. In cases where this is not possible, the hydrants will be located in the closest possible areas (cannons or special hydrants) with the possibility of activating and directing them appropriately. Finally, the network must have the control and location systems necessary for this type of installation.