- The investment, close to 3.5 million euros, guarantees optimum drainage, even under the most extreme rainfall conditions statistically predicted in the long term.
Cepsa has completed the last phase of the project to improve the channeling of the El Hierro ravine at the point where it passes by the Tenerife refinery. These works, which cost in the region of 3.5 million euros, guarantee optimum drainage of the area, even under the most extreme rainfall conditions statistically predicted in the long term.
The work was visited by the director of the Island Water Council of Tenerife (CIATF), Javier Davara, accompanied by his technical team, and guided by the director of Cepsa in the Canary Islands, José Manuel Fernández Sabugo, together with other refinery managers. Davara stated that “this project helps to minimize the risk of floods, so as to protect the town and the plant and prevent future potentially dangerous situations”. He concludes that “this type of intervention comes on top of those the Island Council of Tenerife has carried out in recent years in the Flood Defense Plan (PDA) in other parts of the city”.
This construction project was carried out due to the significant increase in the volume of water that the El Hierro ravine had to drain when there was heavy rainfall, as a result of the hydraulic works carried out by the Administration in recent years to channel the waters that caused flooding in certain areas of the city.
In response to a request from CIATF, Cepsa carried out a study of the situation of the El Hierro ravine as it passed through the refinery's facilities on a line from west to east, including an analysis of the hydraulic risk and the implementation of the necessary actions to guarantee optimum drainage, even under the worst rainfall conditions that could occur in the long term.
A large-scale construction project
Following up on the conclusions of the study, Cepsa set to work on the ravine, increasing the size of the intake drainage to the refinery facilities to allow the drainage of the maximum flow of runoff foreseen, as well as various actions to free the riverbed.
Works carried out included the construction of several reinforced concrete channels, including one at the entrance to the Refinery connected to the natural channel of the ravine, which has increased the size of the entrance by 500 percent; the adaptation of access ramps to the channel; the elimination or modification of the interior dams that the ravine contained, to avoid overflows towards the banks; the elimination of one of the tanks located at the facility's Wastewater Treatment Plant; and substantial modifications to the piping layout of the areas included in the works, moving instrumentation and electricity lines and cables.
With this project, Cepsa has taken a further step forward in the continuous improvement of its environmental management, since, according to the simulations carried out before the project execution, the foreseeable increase in the flow along the El Hierro ravine in the future could cause flooding in some areas of the capital and could partially affect the refinery's own facilities. The scale of the drainage work carried out will allow the flow of runoff to be drained, preventing flooding.