The City Council of La Guancha announced yesterday that the restrictions on water consumption were extended to the entire population and to the entire municipality, not as up to now that it only affected specific areas. The fluoride parameters rose in one of the tanks and yesterday exceeded 4.1 milligrams per liter and this means that tap water is not suitable for drinking, cooking, or preparing food in general.
This situation is due, in part, to a mixture of untreated water with which comes from the Vergara gallery, the only channel that supplies the municipality, from which water comes out with an excess of fluoride of about 7 milligrams per liter when the The limit set by the Public Health Directorate of the Canary Islands Government is 4 milligrams for those over 8 years of age and 1.5 milligrams for those under that age.
For this reason, La Guancha is the only town in the Canary Islands that treats water in a Salobres Desalination Station (EDAS).
With the aim of guaranteeing continuous supply to all homes, the City Council has left a part of the water without desalination in the EDAS and this has had the main consequence of raising the fluoride index.
However, the problem is more complex, according to the mayor, Antonio Domínguez, and requires action in several directions, but the most important is to create an insular water ring, a measure that will not only benefit the municipality but the rest of the city. the region and the Isla Baja, which also suffer from a significant supply problem.
“It is a structural problem at the island level because Vergara supplies all of Tenerife but La Guancha does not get water from other areas where there is surplus, such as the La Orotava Valley. It is necessary to raise this reality to the administrations to find a solution and this involves obtaining an insular ring of water, that is, La Guancha can buy water from the Valley or from Tacoronte, something that today cannot be done ”, he says . “There is no bidirectionality in the water when that would help a lot,” insists the president.
Hernández underlines the “fictitious barrier” that exists in the Crown of Icod el Alto, which prevents water from reaching the municipality. We not only have obstacles in roads and telecommunications but also in water matters and this is one more consequence of the lack of investment in the region ”.
However, in what concerns him as municipal councilor, the corrective measures go, first, to locate leaks, which is what the two municipal plumbers do day and night to avoid wasting water, and second, to raise awareness in the community. population, as consumption remains high.
Another measure is to buy more water, something that for a long time “has been impossible, because there is no more water on the market and we cannot provide more flow to our inlet tanks,” clarifies the mayor.
“It is not in my head to privatize the service”
Antonio Hernández assures that the manager of the Insular Water Council “is determined” to privatize the service, something to which he flatly refuses. “It is not in my head, because municipal management for a small town is much cheaper. In addition, I am a defender of municipalism ”, he stresses.
