Yilong County: a green infrastructure project that blends into the urban landscape

In Yilong County, Maccaferri China took the lead in the development of a sophisticated infrastructure project – ranked first by the Yilong City Construction project in 2020 – aimed at stopping the erosion of the Jialing River banks. 

 Yilong County, which lies in southwest China, in Sichuan Province, is characterized by a complex landform. The area is crossed by the more than 1,000-kilometer-long Jialing River, whose waters have damaged the banks over time, jeopardizing their stability. Indeed, the riverbank is mainly made up of silt and has little resilience to erosion caused by water runoff. Moreover, the area, which is located near a power plant, is subject to flooding occurring every year, contributing to soil erosion. Finally, even traditional turf greening is no longer fulfilling the purpose of stopping water erosion. 

 To address these critical issues, Maccaferri was called upon to carry out a hydraulic engineering work, dealing with a portion of land covering 43 km. Since the riverbed is mostly made up of pebbles and as the installation of sluice gates would have been too expensive, we developed a solution that took into account the unique features of the river and the different levels of the water. To protect the bank, Reno TM Mattresses, gabions and, sack gabions beneath the water level were used together, while, for embankment protection, reinforced MacMat™ geomats were employed, providing stability and rapid and natural greening. 

Maccaferri’s intervention was extremely effective; besides solving the problem caused by margin erosion, product installation is much less complex than that of the sluice gates, thus speeding up the building process and lowering the overall project cost. 

Maccaferri’s was not only a purely technical intervention, but also influenced city life itself. In fact, on the one hand, the plan managed to solve the problem of embankment erosion, and on the other hand, it helped establish a greening protection system for the area, enabling creation of green areas for citizen use. This way, water conservation issues were also solved to meet the ecological needs of the Jiangdong area of Yilong County. 

 Such a large-scale work has contributed to the harmonization between the urban and natural worlds, leading to the birth of a fully-fledged “ecological landscape”, in keeping with the principles of sustainable development that inspire Maccaferri’s work.   

Technical Box Highlights: 

• Sack Gabion 1000 m2
• Gabion 500 m2
• Vegetative mat 500 m2
• Ecological substrate 500 m2