The first campaign of the rehabilitation project of the Salinas del Río or de Gusa has already culminated, according to the Tourist Centers, from where the result of the works has been verified this Thursday. The second phase, according to the institution, will begin to be executed next summer, once the nesting season of the birds that live in that habitat is over.
The works of this first campaign have consisted of the rehabilitation of 720 meters of the Defense Fort with a breakwater embankment and 250 meters of wall of the main pipe with lime mortars, pebbles and mud bottom; the total repair of the most deteriorated sections of the wall that separates the mother cooker from the head and the steps between the cookers and the tajería; and the partial repair of the first intake, the walls of the salt warehouse and the fine party pipe.
"This first phase has been focused on recovering the walls that abandonment and the sea had destroyed and thus prevent the salt flats from being flooded again and can, in a more or less near future, recover the characteristic, striking and admired red color that was given by the Artemia salina and other extremophiles that inhabited them", said the president of the Cabildo, who traveled this Thursday to the Salinas del Río together with the president of the Board of Directors of the Centers, Echedey Eugenio, and the CEO of the entity, José Juan Lorenzo, to check in situ the evolution of a "very exciting" project, for all that it means to recover these salt flats, the oldest in the Canary Islands, for Lanzarote, the people of Lanzarote, and the archipelago as a whole".
Analysis of the mud and lime "that defy all current theories"
The works began on August 6, and have had the participation of a team of stonemasons hired by the Art, Culture and Tourism Centers, a SCCATMECA machinist and a masonry team from Construcciones JM La Graciosa, supervised by the architect Alberto Luengo and the Conservation and Maintenance Department of the Centers. The visit this Thursday was also attended by the heads of the company specialized in lime mortars Cumen, interested in checking the result of the application of their materials "in such a unique work".
During the works, there has also been collaboration with the Spanish Bank of Algae, through the University of Las Palmas, which has collected and is analyzing samples of the microalgae found in the salt flats. Simultaneously, a laboratory in Barcelona has carried out analyses of the mud and old lime present "which, from the beginning, reveal results that defy all current theories on the use of lime mortars in construction", according to the CACT.
Second campaign of the works
The first campaign of the rehabilitation project of the Salinas del Río has had a budget of around 220,000 euros from the Canary Islands Development Fund (FDCAN), which is managed from the Planning and Project Coordination Unit of the Cabildo.
The works of the second campaign are scheduled to begin at the beginning of next summer, once the nesting season of the birds that live in that habitat is over. According to the Cabildo, it will be when the restoration of the constructed elements of the salt flats such as walls, remaining pipes and cuts, as well as the rehabilitation of the salt warehouse, which the president announced will be dedicated to "didactic, scientific and recreational" purposes, will be carried out gradually.
"The recovery of the Salinas del Río is essential in the strategy of recovery of spaces that have an important load of historical, patrimonial and ethnographic value that we are putting into practice from the Centers. In parallel, with this work we open a very wide scenario for the landscape recovery of the environment near the Mirador del Río and for the environmental regeneration of this area", said the president of the Board of Directors of the Centers, Echedey Eugenio.