National
Expo exhibition facing up to the flowing Ebro river
By h.b.
Jun 3, 2008 - 1:15 PM

It now been established that the month of May was the wettest in the lower Ebro area since 1880, with the weather station at Roquetas in Tarragona reporting 229.3 litres per square metre, about half the usual annual rainfall at the site.

The rain caused flooding in the Basque region over the weekend and the recent rains in Barcelona have restored the city’s reservoirs to over 54% capacity. That has allowed the Government to cancel a controversial planned new pipeline between Tarragona and Barcelona to supply water to the Catalan capital which also no longer needs water to be brought in by tanker into the port. The cabinet will official cancel those plans on Friday. Meanwhile the Catalan Government is allowing swimming pools to be refilled in the region from today.

Flooding warnings are now being removed from areas of the Basque Country, La Rioja and Cantabria, but the fast flowing Ebro river is however now proving a threat to the EXPO international exhibition which opens in Zaragoza in ten days time. Sand bags are being used to enforce the banks of the river as the high water time is expected at the site tomorrow and a first full rehearsal for the opening ceremony which was to have been held this Thursday has now been cancelled.

Water levels rose by 3.3 m overnight, and the EXPO organisers are drawing up an alternative opening ceremony in case the planned ‘Iceburg visual symphony poem’ cannot be held on the river bank in ten days time.