Planning an integral drainage system for a coastal area

摘要

Nowadays the management of water resources has become a top priority issue for Spanish public administration. This management of water resources is especially delicate in South eastern Spain where water is particularly scarce, principally as a result of the irregular distribution of rainfall and secondly, just as important, as a result of its overwhelming use in overly dense population areas where water has to meet great demands in many activities that range from agricultural, industrial, urban to sports facilities such as for golf courses among others. To counteract the effects derived from water scarcity, changes are being proposed to improve the management of the limited resources within a sustainable framework. In this way, an appealing alternative both from a technical and from an economic and environmental perspective would suggest the need to re-use urban wastewater to satisfy the demands that require non-drinkable water. Needless to say, in order to re-use urban wastewater, we need to depend on existing infrastructures for drainage and water treatment. Such infrastructures and those for regeneration and re-usage of urban wastewater feature the physical layout of an integral drainage system. In this paper we present the planning of an integral drainage system for a coastal area in Southeastern Spain. The proposal was developed as a result of an agreement reached between the Benissa city council in Alicante and the Institute of Water and Environmental Sciences of the University of Alicante.