The emergency that the rural area of Buga has been experiencing in recent weeks is not due exclusively to anthropic effects associated with the felling of the forest, but rather corresponds fundamentally to natural conditions that occur in the area.
This was announced by the director of the CVC, Marco Antonio Suárez Gutiérrez, who responded to the concerns of the columnist of this journalistic house, Fabio Larrahondo, who in his section “The mop question” told him: Did you notice the large number of trunks and other parts of trees that fell in the avalanches in La Magdalena and Havana, rural area of Buga before the overflow of some ravines?
In answering this question, Suárez Gutiérrez stated that “the CVC in the last four years has registered about twenty events that account for the situation that occurs in the middle and upper basin of the Guadalajara river, which has conditions of unstable geology and registers faults, relief, geomorphology and high slopes”.
Adds the director of the CVC that “to these characteristics, a surplus of rainfall of approximately two years has been added, resulting in the supersaturation of the soils and the consequent failure in the terrain, as well as rotational landslides, such as those that occurred last Friday, January 20, in the Alto Cielo ravine, which affected the township of Havana.”
According to the environmental director, “the above is confirmed by the data obtained from the El Vergel hydroclimatological station, which registers the flows of the basin. On January 20, a value of 34.4 cubic meters per second was reported, an important flow that partly exceeded the average monthly records for this station.
On the other hand, the CVC reports that in development of the session of the Buga Municipal Disaster Risk Management Council, the result of the monitoring that was done with drones on the affected area was presented, ratifying the causes of the emergency: natural conditions related to the high rainfall, geology and relief of the sector of the Guadalajara river basin.
Marco Antonio Suárez expresses that “the solution to the problem of this territory arises from the solidary, coordinated and articulated work of all the actors; Torrential floods or avalanches are not necessarily associated with deforestation issues, there are other types of factors such as those listed above that can produce these extreme phenomena. Hence the importance of abiding by the recommendations of the environmental authorities and risk management agencies to avoid regrettable events”.
Instability
What happened in the township of Havana, rural area of Buga, where a stream overflowed causing flooding, is not new, reported the CVC.
The entity indicates that the landslides and landslides that frequently occur in this area due to what was explained above, have affected the stability of the river basins and streams and when torrential rains come, such as the one that occurred on January 20. , these are dragged by the currents together with sediments, vegetation and trunks that have been accumulating and in the end they generate damming.
The foregoing, according to CVC experts, is a risk factor that affects this basin, which is why it is constantly monitored.
For this reason, the CVC has been participating in the meetings of the Buga Municipal Disaster Risk Management Council, in which they make permanent recommendations related to the type of activities that can be carried out, but precautions must be taken, especially the houses that are nearby. to water sources, or hiking, which is not recommended in rainy seasons, or livestock farming on unstable soils.
The interventions
Given the instability of the soils in this area, the CVC has been present in the area for a long time with various projects that have to do with soil restoration, water agreements, reforestation, watershed management, reengineering, tourism nature, studies on the geological situation of the basin, among others, in support of risk management.
Likewise, work is being done with peasants and productive units to improve agroecological practices, so that there are fewer chemicals and solid waste management.
In addition, a presence is made when there are violations of the environment, land use or affectation of the forest, for which restrictive measures are put in place.
After the recent emergency, the CVC will carry out a work plan with that of the Buga Municipal Disaster Risk Management Council to make new clearings, new isolations, try to give an adequate channel to the main streams of this basin and therefore to the Guadalajara river, as well as planting new trees, because it is a process that cannot be stopped.
The CVC expressed its willingness to continue supporting the collection of valuable and abundant technical information to continue resolving the situation, in order to make the most appropriate decisions.
The Guadalajara river basin is estimated to cover more or less 30,000 hectares in all its extension, of which close to 30% has forest cover, which is an important figure in terms of forest.
Leadership
Valle del Cauca, through the “Greener Valley” program promoted by the environmental corporation, is one of the departments least impacted by the problem of deforestation.
The entity indicated that “while in other regions it can reach 20,000 or 30,000 hectares deforested, in a region like ours deforestation does not reach 200 hectares.”
In the last four years, more than one hundred thousand hectares have been reforested and the entity has planted more than six million trees and many hectares have been restored in the different basins, which helps to mitigate risk, but this does not guarantee control of the geological difficulties that occur in some sectors of the department such as those that occur in the corregimientos of Havana and La Magdalena, rural area of Buga, which require special treatment and permanent monitoring.
Photos: CVC
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