Pombal supports cleaning of fuel management lanes with half a million euros

Pombal City Council will transfer around half a million euros to parish councils and unions, to clean fuel management lanes, councilor Catarina Silva told the Lusa agency today.

“We delegate this competence through interadministrative contracts and the transition of the respective budget for cleaning and cutting”, explained Catarina Silva.

The mayor added that the municipality always intends for this process “to be completed by the end of the first semester, as quickly as possible”, although recognizing that, “sometimes, this is not always possible, especially because many of the councils also subcontract this service ” and are “dependent on the availability of third parties”.

“Weather conditions are also important, because we increasingly know that we can clean today, [mas] If it rains a lot, this first cleaning will not be enough, it will have to be reinforced”, said Catarina Silva, guaranteeing that the prospect is that everything will be clean by June 30th.

The councilor who has, among others, the responsibilities of Ecology, Environment and Climate Action, said that the municipality defines, annually, which are the priority fuel management lanes of 10 meters, parallel to the municipal road network, for the respective cleaning.

“[A limpeza] it was designed with the intention of reducing the speed of the fire – by not having trees and having clean land, there is a greater chance of it decreasing. But we’ve even noticed a lot more advantages, now that we’ve been doing them for a few years, even in winter,” she said.

Considering that this process has a “dual function”, Catarina Silva noted that, “in summer, in forest fires”, it allows “a slower fire rate and in winter the trees fall”.

“If we don’t have large trees within 10 meters [junto] to the carriageways, they do not fall onto the road, which is an advantage”, he declared.

This year, the cleaning, budgeted at 489,750 euros, covers 326.5 hectares (approximately 160 kilometers of road network), 62 hectares more when compared to 2023, the year in which the investment was 390 thousand euros.

“We vary the tracks too. Not every year are the same roads subject to this cleaning”, added the councilor.

The last major fires in the municipality were in July 2022, burning 20% ​​of the parish of Abiul, which covers 54 square kilometers.

Then, the president of the municipality, Pedro Pimpão, announced that the losses exceeded 5.6 million euros in the agro-forestry area alone.

Lusa