In bad weather flooding everywhere?It's the fault of the ditches that are no longer there

To gain space for roads and cycle paths, but even more to increase productivity, ditches have been practically eliminated from the countryside:this is why flooding is so frequent now.Geologists explain it

BOLOGNA – The much announced wave of bad weather has hit Emilia-Romagna and “widespread flooding has been reported throughout Romagna” which however “would not derive from the swollen rivers but from the secondary drainage network”, observes Paride Antolini, president of the Order of Geologists of Emilia-Romagna.And this would not be a fact to be underestimated:“We need to focus on the secondary drainage network, ditches and urban drainage network.”Because, as he explains in a note, “in the countryside, in recent decades, there has been a continuous closure of ditches, to their systematic elimination.The agronomic technique of field shaping, that is, creating a convex profile of fields surrounded by ditches, has been abandoned.The purpose of the bed formation was to prevent the formation of stagnation by encouraging flow towards a dense network of drains and collection ditches.This led to an accumulation of water in the ditches comparable to the quantity of an expansion tank, now so much invoked".But to “increase agricultural production levels” Today the ground is leveled “to simplify work, increase productivity” with the effect, however, of eliminating “drains and ditches” and therefore reducing “the capacity for water accumulation in our countryside.A bit like closing a large expansion tank."
In the city, however, according to geologists, the urban drainage network developed “like a large puzzle, expanding from time to time according to needs without, most of the time, a large-scale urban planning project".AND the “continuous closure of the ditches with their manhole covers it certainly makes road, pedestrian and cycle paths more usable, but What happens beneath the topographical surface? A blockage?A breakage, a difficulty in flow?And who sees it? We notice it when the road surface floods“, observes Antolini.Furthermore, these situations must now withstand the impact of 'new' rains, more intense and for short periods.

“We also have a secondary runoff network that needs to be redesigned to deal with these particularly intense rainfall events,” suggests the president of the geologists of Emilia-Romagna.“What shouldn't we do?Try to solve everything with the usual exclusively engineering approach - I widen a drainage section, I widen a pipe - and give little importance to the natural flow of water and respect for the natural geomorphology of the territory", concludes Antolini.