The Madrid City Council will spend almost a million euros on a pilot project to illuminate 560 meters of the riverbed at night. Manzanares Riverat the height of dam six in Madrid Río, to “make this environment of the city more attractive for residents and visitors.” The announcement made this MondayHowever, it has alerted environmentalists and ornithologists, who warn that the light projected directly into the riverbed can affect the fauna that has settled in the river after the renaturalization process that began in 2016. Ecologistas en Acción has asked the City Council to reconsider the intervention that will begin a series of works in July that will last eight months.
The colored light will come from the banks of the channel, through 61 projectors at 57 points between the Oblique Bridge and the Andorra footbridge, to which four projectors with greater power will be added to highlight the dam, according to the City Council. The devices “(are) capable of highlighting large structures more than 30 meters away and mixing different shades of color,” the statement highlights. But the project will not stop there. “The installation is scalable to take on future expansions,” celebrates the City Council, which has argued that the lighting will offer “a friendly and safer nighttime experience for neighbors and visitors.”
Santiago Martín Barajas, a member of Ecologistas en Acción since its founding in 1998 and witness to the recovery of the Manzanares River, criticizes that the project “is unnecessary” and denounces that “it will affect the fauna.” “The animals can already tolerate human presence enough, but adding night lighting during a period in which they are calmer has negative effects on bird species and could cause some to abandon the river,” fears Martín. More than 120 species of birds inhabit the recovered Manzanares, according to calculations by Ecologistas en Acción. Among them, the gray herons, martinets and snipes stand out, as well as the presence of migratory birds that arrive in winter from northern Europe.
Martín Barajas, who has followed the evolution of the ecosystem for the last eight years, regrets that this could affect the renaturalization process. “Recovery has been achieved and it has stood out nationally and internationally. This cannot be clouded by unnecessary actions. If they want to illuminate the historic bridges, that’s fine; but not the river bed,” he adds.
The lighting of a section of the Manzanares River would unnecessarily produce important alterations to the rich fauna that inhabits it. The Madrid City Council should reconsider this project. Neither the people of Madrid nor the river need it.https://t.co/Q1u2JKgDa4
— Santiago M. Barajas (@Santi_MBarajas) May 27, 2024
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In 2016, the City Council, then in the hands of Manuela Carmena (Now Madrid), decided to take a decisive step: she raised the floodgates that impounded the water and let a river flow through that runs 7.5 kilometers in the capital and originates in the mountains. from Guadarrama, in the north of the region, and flows, after a 92 kilometer journey, into the Jarama River, in the municipality of Rivas-Vaciamadrid, to the south. After that opening and a series of investments, the vegetation began to multiply. In the first two years, 2,000 specimens of native trees appeared, including willows or white poplars, and the green became visible and began to grow strongly. The birds began to nest. Native fish such as barbel arrived.
The City Council maintains that the lighting project “will be carried out in a manner compatible with the naturalization criteria of the urban section of Manzanares.” The council ensures that during the installation of the projectors the areas with vegetation will not be reduced. He has even highlighted that the system “minimizes light pollution” and is energy efficient. But among environmentalists, skepticism is strong.
The opposition has also cried foul. Rita Maestre has described the project as “tacky.” “You have to be tacky to try to illuminate a river as if it were a shopping center,” Maestre criticized this Monday. “We tell Carabante (the delegate of the Urban Planning Area) that we are not going to allow it, that no one has asked for the riverbed to be illuminated and that if there is a lighting problem in the area where one walks, that it be illuminated.” ; but not that its channel is illuminated,” he added.
This is not the first time that environmentalists have raised their voices for Manzanares. In February, The Madrid City Council paid 46,000 euros to explode 300 kilos of gunpowder in a maleto join the celebration of the Valencian Fallas. Neither the neighborhood opposition nor the precautionary complaints requested by an animal shelter could stop the event, which was attended by more than 20,000 people.
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