Ludueña Stream

The Ludueña Stream (in Spanish, Arroyo Ludueña[1]) is a small river (about 19 kilometres (12 mi) long including its tributaries) in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina, which starts near the city of Rosario and flows through it, mostly east-southwards, ending in the Paraná River in the neighbourhood commonly known as Arroyito, near Rosario Central's football stadium.

The mouth of the stream

The exit of the underground pipes that carry the stream before emptying into the Paraná River in Rosario

The Ludueña drains an 800 square kilometres (310 sq mi) area which includes Rosario and several smaller towns (Pérez, Zavalla, Pujato, Funes, Roldán, San Jerónimo, Luis Palacios, Ricardone, Ibarlucea, and Camilo Aldao). Parts of its drainage basin are subject to flooding. The last important episode, in 1986, affected several neighbourhoods of the north-east of Rosario (notably the barrios of Ludueña Norte and Empalme Graneros, where water was almost 2 m deep in some points). This flood sparked a grassroots movement to pressure the provincial government to fund preventive measures.

A length of 1.5 km of the Ludueña Stream were piped into five underground closed conduits, with a cross section of 74 m², which cross densely populated areas and resurface to empty the stream into a final open section a few hundred metres from the Paraná River. In 1995, after two-year works, an earth-fill dam in the upper course of the Ludueña was completed; it is designed as a buffer, to contain and regulate sudden peaks of waterflow, and according to estimates it directly or indirectly benefits about 200,000 people in Rosario and nearby towns.