In the past years, The Civil Engineering Department of Valdarno Inferiore commissioned several studies on the Era River. All of them pointed out that the hydraulic risk is not significantly reduced by the interventions previously planned, such as the expansion tanks, as these have proved ineffective in decreasing the flow rate of the river alongside the urban area of Pontedera. This is due to the impossibility of obtaining a significant increase in the reservoir capacity upstream, compared to the current state.

To solve these problems, the Commissioner of Government Against Hydrogeological Instability published a call for tenders to “design the consolidation intervention of the existing embankments, in the final stretch of the Era River at the Pontedera (LI) town centre”.

Hydea, in a grouping with geologists from the Ingeo studio, was awarded the tender. The final and executive design activities will begin soon, and will also include geognostic investigations, laboratory tests for the definition of geotechnical parameters, and war risk assessment. The design components envisage the consolidation of the existing embankments, in order to increase their resistance to embankment overtopping and siphoning in case of events with a two-hundred-year return time.