With autumn underway, the Association for the Promotion and Environmental Protection of the Azores warns that vegetation, soil and debris obstructing roadsides, drainage channels and streams could intensify the effects of heavy rainfall. Its message is simple: prevention must begin before the storm arrives.
Rain does not become a disaster only when it falls from the sky. Sometimes the danger has already been accumulating quietly along a roadside—in a ditch filled with soil, a drain covered by vegetation, a stream obstructed by debris or an agricultural road from which water can no longer escape. It is this less visible geography of prevention that the Association for the Promotion and Environmental Protection of the Azores (APPAA) wants authorities to address urgently as the islands enter autumn.
According to the association, complaints have emerged on several islands regarding inadequate maintenance of roads, agricultural tracks and forest routes. APPAA points particularly to vegetation encroaching upon roadways, in some cases making it difficult for two vehicles to pass simultaneously, and to shoulders and drainage systems covered by soil and vegetation. When ditches, drains and culverts are obstructed, the association argues, the infrastructure designed to guide rainwater safely away from roads can no longer perform its essential function.
The concern becomes greater during periods of intense rainfall. APPAA warns that when water cannot enter drainage systems, it instead travels across paved surfaces, gaining volume and speed. Asphalted or cemented agricultural and forest roads can further accelerate runoff, directing water toward slopes and lower roads. In the association’s assessment, this can increase erosion and the possibility of landslides involving soil and vegetation. Roads downstream, deprived of functioning drainage, may themselves become temporary waterways and carry flooding toward populated areas.
Streams and other natural watercourses require the same attention. APPAA argues that uncontrolled vegetation and accumulated debris can obstruct the free movement of water and increase the danger of floods and flash flooding. With the arrival of autumn, the association considers intervention urgent and questions whether public resources devoted to frequent grass cutting in roundabouts and urban streets might, at least in part, be redirected toward areas where maintenance has a more immediate preventive function.
Its appeal is therefore for coordinated action. APPAA calls for personnel and equipment from the relevant Regional Government departments and IROA, working together with local municipalities, to remove material from road shoulders, clear ditches and storm drains, and eliminate vegetation and debris obstructing waterways. The objective is not simply aesthetic maintenance, but restoring the pathways through which water must travel when rainfall becomes intense.
There is an important distinction in that argument. Cleaning a ditch is an ordinary act when the weather is calm; during an extreme rainfall event, that same ditch can become part of an island’s first line of protection. A cleared stream may appear insignificant in summer, yet acquire an entirely different importance when autumn rain descends from higher ground toward villages and towns.
APPAA summarizes its warning through an old principle that becomes particularly meaningful on steep and rain-exposed islands: it is more advantageous to prevent disaster than to repair its consequences.
In the Azores, preparing for rain therefore begins before the first drop falls—by ensuring that, when the water comes, it still has somewhere safe to go.
Based on a story in Diário dos Açores, Paulo Viveiros, director. Photos from DA.