It's a job for politicians: solve the citizens' problems, that's why we pay taxes. That is what the authorities of all colours have heard when they have gone to see the people who have been caught by water.

But on many occasions the authorities really have very little solution to go beyond patches, the repairs that can be imposed are very expensive and some have to spoil others to take away the problem.

The Urumea river has been overflowing for the second time in Gipuzkoa in just one month, at the end of February, and four years ago it was overflowing. El Ebro, for its part, has been historically marked by the damage it has caused from Navarra to Catalonia.

Each flood always has some peculiarity, in the Urumea the surprising amount of rain falls in the Añarbe area, the great snowfall in the Ebro area, but the phenomenon is repeated more and more in all the basins of the Basque Country and the world. It's true that they're cyclical, but in water management, what's happening in that famous frog experiment is: you throw the frog into the water that boils and jumps, while, leaving it in warm water, you'll agree to heat -- until it dies cooked.

Although the one who has entered the kitchen, in the workshop or in the office of the Uriola house curse the water, the key lies in the management of the territory and the soil, as much or more than in the water. We should take advantage of the fact that the United Nations has declared 2015 the International Year of Soil to reflect on what we have done so far and to stop the new barbarities that we have foreseen for the coming decades.

Problems with the soil? Look at the Urumea. First of all, the diminishing width of the river in the basin for exceptional situations that are cyclical and are multiplying, which are nothing more than the floods. From the mouth of San Sebastian to the industrial estate of Hernani in Epela... How many cubic meters has lost the valley since 1960?

During these years, the construction of houses, industrial sites, ramilletes of motorways, the TAV, the channelling of streams and the construction of history require an inventory of the areas taken from the valley. The waters that the river carries in these unique blows must cross somewhere. On the other hand, all new buildings are organized at higher levels than the previous ones, condemning the older ones to water dependency and even to waterproofing the soil.

Until many neighbours of Loiola or Martutene are underwater, they have not realized the funnel that has been organized into the river with the apple that they built on the banks of Loiola, authorized by the City Hall of Donostia-San Sebastián by all the authorities of the Environment. As many Astigarraga neighbours have now realised how unwise the Urumea Berri urbanization is and how damaging it is for those who have remained below the level.

As street dwellers are the ones who exert the greatest pressure on the authorities, the tasks of organizing the patches for river damage will now be taken by those who have long lived in peace: How many houses and homes are not going to have to knock them down or tear them down if they can't channel rabies?

“Stop to Consumption of Territory”

In addition to the magnitude of cubic meters to the valley, soil artificialization is a serious problem. The rich soil generated for thousands of years, able to raise plants, set carbon from the air and drain rainwater, is replaced by concrete or asphalt. The dynamics do not change much the orders or the left of the right: the authorities pass but the architects and engineers do not and those who plan the urbanism are specialized in the sterilization of fertile soils.

It also has a direct bearing on flooding. Every square meter built is a meter that doesn't absorb rain. Planners do their best to send water quickly from the places, not to stay in them. By the way or by the street to the sewer, from here to the river. Outside trees, water retention areas, widening them to mitigate water shocks...

In many parts of the world, this way of managing land and water is highly criticized. In some places corrective measures have been put in place, a soil that absorbs water in the parking lots, rainpits on the margins of the highways, that the ditches of the ditches are not of beton... But here too Hego Euskal Herria is very large Spain and most of our planners have not heard. God of concrete.

The “Stop to Consumption of Territory” campaign denounces that in Italy. A movement in favour of land that has not yet been horrified has been organised: “Over the past 15 years, about three million hectares of agricultural land have been covered with asphalt and beton.”

The French Wikipedia already has an entry called Artificialisation (which is why we have allowed ourselves to use artificialization in Basque although Xuxen does not accept it) in which it says: “In France in 2011 he was the Prime Minister of Ecology. According to Kosciusko-Morizet, an average of 165 hectares of land is lost every day, that is, 1,650,000 m2 of natural soil and suitable for crops, housing, roads and industrial activities.” What is there in the Basque Country?

From here we have the research work that Eugenio Ruiz Urrestarazu and Rosario Galdos Urrutia did in 2013 at the hand of the Geography Department of the UPV/EHU: “The loss of forest crops, the artificialization of the soil and Spain and the Basque Country”.

The CAV has described the terrible disaster we have suffered by the Basques in the last ten years, from 1999 to 2009: Between 1999 and 2009, the artificial area of the CAPV as a whole has increased by 21%, transforming existing areas for crops or forest masses into housing or industrial or commercial activities. If in ten years it has been almost a quarter more, in the next ten years...

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has declared 2015 Soil Year to raise public awareness of this vital raw material: “Soil is said to be a non-renewable resource, as it is not quickly renewed at the time scale humano.De done, one centimeter of soil can be created over many thousands of years.” In addition to the effects of artificialisation that the European Union itself has analysed with alarm for biodiversity, food production, etc., it also has an effect on soil waterproofing.

Here, mention is made of the drilling, fencing and increase of the artificialization of rivers and banks. They won't bring any more pain.