Ecobreves – HONDURAS: Dredging to Fight Floods

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

TEGUCIGALPA, Aug 17 2009 (IPS) - The municipal government of Tegucigalpa last week launched an intense campaign to dredge rivers and ravines and to clean up the city – all to reduce vulnerability to flooding in some 135 neighborhoods considered at risk. Those neighborhoods are home to 300,000 of the capital's 1.2 million residents.

Before the arrival of winter, the mitigation efforts aim to collect 300 tons of garbage dumped in the drains of the city's main streets and markets, and to dredge the rivers that surround the capital, Mayor Ricardo Álvarez told Tierramérica.

Although they won't completely solve the problem, “these actions have had good results, and in the next two years we plan definitive mitigation work in the high risk areas for a total of about 1.3 million dollars,” he said.