The mayor Enrique Cresto received this Friday the governor Gustavo Bordet and the National Minister of the Interior, Rogelio Frigerio, with whom he toured the areas affected by the rise of the Uruguay river. They were at the South Defense, and in different affected neighborhoods.
“If each one of us manages to fulfill the part that corresponds to us, from the municipalities, from the province and from the nation -which is what we have been doing-, without a doubt we are all going to be better", stressed the governor of the province.
Bordet said that the joint work with the Nation and the municipality has yielded "very good results, it has made it possible to carry out an ambitious infrastructure program and to agree on other measures that have to do with better quality of management, with being able to advance in productive development projects. It is the way to work to solve the problems that arise daily, we cannot do anything in isolation. This is part of being able to work together, in a coordinated manner and it is the mechanic that we will continue to apply because we have a lot to develop in Entre Ríos".
Regarding the tour together with Minister Frigerio and Mayor Cresto, he said that the intention is to “monitor the new rise of the Uruguay river. We have works in progress, here in Concordia with an advance of the containment work for the South Defense. Also in Concepción del Uruguay we will be opening the envelopes on the 23rd for the North Defense and the repair of the South Defense”.
“From a year to this part there have been structural modifications that we have faced with the national government, the provincial government and the mayoralties to mitigate the effects of the rise. Of course this takes a period of time between the execution of the works, between the planning of some, as is the case of Villa Paranacito where the project was not there and we are finishing it now, and also with the construction of new housing that in the time we have left of management, together with the nation we will finish the necessary infrastructure works so that the rises, product of a climate change that will persist over time, can be reduced to the absolute minimum".
The authorities departed from the Convention Center towards the South defense; then they went down to the Carretera la Cruz neighborhood to then head to the María Goretti neighborhood.
Subsequently they arrived at the Municipality for the signing of the agreement for the transfer of execution to the municipality of Concordia, of the Toyota housing project.
Concern
Minister Frigerio expressed his concern derived from the rising water. “At that moment the President clearly indicated to us that we had to do the works that were missing so that people are calmer and that these rises do not mean that thousands of Entre Ríos residents cannot sleep thinking that they may lose everything”.
And he mentioned the projects in Colón and Paranacito which were the places most affected in 2015. "This work allows hundreds of families in Concordia to be protected against the rising of the river and there is still more to do”.
Relocation
For his part, Mayor Enrique Cresto regarding the evacuations indicated that "there is a Social Emergency Council that is functioning, all families leave 48 hours in advance, both those who self-evacuate and those who go to the shelters".
He also pointed out that they were talking with the governor and the minister about the need to definitively clear the 14-meter contour line, “but we have to make the community understand that below it there are some neighborhoods that are historical, that have been there since before that resolution not to build below that contour line was voted. Those families have special treatment to generate a project, because we have to get used to living with these increasingly recurrent floods. We are working on that project and we have been advancing to seek that fundamental solution”.
Presence
Accompanying Mayor Cresto, Governor Bordet and Minister Frigerio were National Senator Alfredo De Ángeli; National Deputy Yanina Gayol, Provincial Senator Ángel Giano; Provincial Deputies Joaquín Lamadrid, Ricardo Troncoso, Ayelén Acosta and Alejandro Bahler; the Ministers of Government, Mauro Urribarri; and of Planning, Luis Benedetto; in addition to the Vice Mayor and President of the Deliberative Council of Concordia, Armando Gay, the Cabinet Coordinator María de los Ángeles Petit, and the Secretary of Human Development, Health and Environment Guillermo Echenause, among local government authorities and councilors, the President of the Argentine Delegation to the Mixed Technical Commission of Salto Grande Roberto Niez, among others.