Innovative new paving to collect rainwater from Benidorm car park will help fight drought

The project plans to incorporate a drainage network to store and recover rainwater, as well as a surveillance and lighting system

Benidorm city council is set to revamp the car park located in the El Moralet area with a project worth over 2.1 million euros that aims to make the existing infrastructure to be made more functional and sustainable, and help to mitigate the water shortages faced by this part of Spain during the drier months of the year.

The plan was conveyed by the mayor of the city, Toni Pérez, and the councillor for Mobility, Francis Muñoz, who last week visited the car park as part of the activities organised in the municipality on the occasion of the European Mobility Week.

Pérez stated, “We continue to invest in an issue as important for this local government as improving the offer of free parking, in this case with a project financed by Europe that will greatly improve this space.”

This first phase of the project, named ‘Sustainable Urban Drainage System for the implementation of a park and ride parking on a municipal plot in Partida del Moralet’, is just one small part of the wider ‘Benidorm Vision 360’ Tourism Sustainability Plan.

The plan has a budget of 2,104,700.58 euros to be used on the ​​17,244-square-metre area, of which 15,018 are intended for parking and the rest for service areas, buffering and landscape regeneration.

This arrangement will maintain the existing surface of the parking space, but will make their distribution more efficient. The space will accommodate up to 396 general spaces, 7 family spaces and 16 for vehicles for people with reduced mobility.

The Councillor for Mobility, Francis Muñoz, stated that the planned actions include “a station for regulating the entry and exit of vehicles, a station for counting capacity and a new electrical installation, which will include public lighting, surveillance and access control systems and irrigation installation”.

The entire design will be based on the sustainability criteria. So the implementation of buffer barriers and landscape regeneration areas are essential for mitigating the effects of the works on El Moralet Park.

Muñoz continued by stating that “the current dirt pavement will be replaced by an agglomerated surface with sustainable drainage, which will serve to store, infiltrate and evapotranspire as much rainwater as possible”.

The hope is that with this new water storage and recycling system, the car park can become the latest tool in Benidorm’s fight against drought and water restrictions.

Finally, Francis Muñoz has indicated that the City Council has already prepared the project and is only waiting to receive authorisation from the Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat Valenciana and the Canal Bajo del Algar organisations to proceed.

Images: Ayuntamiento de Benidorm