Javier Rodríguez Medina emphasizes that «the Island Council collaborates and takes a step forward with the municipality of Buenavista del Norte to solve this problem and ensure that the coastal area is not degraded by the outcrop of waste from the old El Fraile landfill, as a result of the important effect of marine erosion ». The counselor points out that this financial aid from the Island Corporation to the Buenavistero Consistory “represents 60% of the cost of executing the drainage and environmental restoration project of the entire affected area.”
“The Cabildo de Tenerife, the public administration competent in the management of island waste, had to collaborate and cooperate in this project so important for the municipality, the region of Isla Baja and the rest of the island of Tenerife”, the counselor highlights. Javier Rodríguez points out that the discharges extracted in this intervention will be transferred to the Tenerife Environmental Complex, located in the southern municipality of Arico.
Rodríguez Medina adds that El Fraile was one of the many illegal landfills in Tenerife at the beginning of the 80s of the last century. “At the time, waste management was utterly nonsensical and did not respond to a global strategy or planning. Everything was the result of an improvisation, “laments the insular councilor. In his opinion, “thanks to the government of the socialist José Segura Clavell, an island waste strategy was established in the Cabildo that included a first-rate waste infrastructure, which is the current Tenerife Environmental Complex, in Arico, supported by four other plants of transfers that are located in different parts of the island, and that promoted the closure and sealing of illegal dumps like this one in Buenavista del Norte.
This old municipal landfill ceased to be used in 1985 and was buried under a road, but erosion brought it to light again in 2016 and, since then, work has been done on the search for a definitive solution. For the mayor of Buenavista, Antonio González (SSP), “the mistakes of the past end up mortgaging future generations and this landfill is a good example.” Cleaning and recovering the area has been for his government “an inalienable objective.” The Telesforo Bravo Juan Coello Foundation has also denounced the situation and recalled that “despite the fact that the spill stopped a long time ago, and a walkway was built on garbage in 1991, the sea is undermining it. The waste remains in the air and is washed away by the sea ”.
