By the end of this year, the citizens of Vila Nova de Famalicão will be able to enjoy another 20 kilometres of totally recovered riverside areas.
The Vila Nova de Famalicão City Hall marked this Monday, February 6, the beginning of the recovery and hydrographical enhancement works of the Ave Basin. The first river to be intervened is the Pelhe, but, in the meantime, the works will also reach the Ave and Guisande rivers and the Beleco stream, in Ribeirão.
"We are going to create pedestrian paths, plant more than 10 thousand trees in the riverside areas, treat the rivers, restoring them, that is, we are looking at our rivers so that we can give back this natural heritage so important to the famalicenses", said today the mayor, Mário Passos, who was accompanied by the councilman of the Environment, Hélder Pereira, and by the vice-president of the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA), José Pimenta Machado.
The project foresees the ecological restoration of riversides in urban areas, especially with the stabilisation of their beds; the stabilisation of margins and the improvement of habitats for riverside species in the water domain; the improvement of flow conditions and unblocking of the hydrographic network; the mitigation of flood effects; the rehabilitation of degraded infrastructures, the containment of invasive species and the reinforcement of water quality monitoring systems.
José Pimenta Machado spoke of a "very ambitious, but also very important" project. The APA representative also reminded, "more people enjoying the riverside areas is also synonymous with more people watching over and caring for the rivers".
In this regard, Mário Passos also added that the famalicense municipality and the APA are developing efforts so that there is greater surveillance of the rivers that cross the municipality.
Remember that the intervention results from an application worth 1.2 million euros and covers a total length of about 20 kilometres, crossing agricultural/forest areas and urban agglomerations, with incidence in the parishes of Ribeirão, Fradelos, Lousado, UF of Vila Nova de Famalicão and Calendário, UF of Esmeriz and Cabeçudos and UF of Arnoso and Sezures.
The application was submitted in partnership with the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) and is funded by Portugal 2020, under the Competitiveness and Internationalisation Operational Programme (COMPETE 2020), for €1,285,283.60, of which €1,284,990.00 comes from the European Regional Development Fund.