While the Government of Los Silos (CC-PP) leaves the daisy of yes or no to the agreement, which would allow Garachico to use the regional submarine emissary of the Silense coast, the possibility that the Cabildo of Tenerife and the Garachiquense City Council have to spend a huge amount of money to move all the wastewater by road. The mayor, José Heriberto González (CC), initially estimated at about 10 trucks a day the amount necessary to end the problem. At an average price of around 250 euros, the estimated expenditure by the northern town hall was about 2,500 euros a day, 17,500 euros a week, and about 75,000 euros a month.
The counselor of the Area of Sustainable Development and Fight against Climate Change of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Javier Rodríguez Medina (PSOE), has indicated to EL DÍA that this number of trucks will be much higher and raises the figure to an average of 55 trucks per day. A cost of about 13,000 euros a day, about 91,000 euros a week, more than 364,000 euros a month. Last July, the Insular Socialist Group proposed to allocate 1.2 million euros to the Garachico City Council to collect the municipal wastewater through trucks and transfer it to the Valle de Guerra treatment plant. An amount that would give to finance this transfer for just three months.
More than 50 kilometers
The 55 trucks would have to travel about 50 kilometers, between Garachico and the Wastewater Treatment Plant from Valle de Guerra, in La Laguna, which would also generate significant energy consumption and increased pollution from the emissions of these heavy vehicles. Javier Rodríguez acknowledges that this proposal is on the table, but insists that “what is reasonable and sustainable is that” the City Council of Los Silos signs the agreement so that a work that has already been done can be used “, and that it has cost more than one million euros. In addition, it insists that Los Silos continues to dump untreated water into the sea through a damaged outfall. This agreement would not only allow the waters, after an initial treatment in Etbar de Garachico, to reach the Silense outfall. The agreement provides that the Cabildo de Tenerife undertakes the comprehensive repair of the regional outfall, whose maintenance corresponded to the municipality of Los Silos, and the renovation of the Silense treatment plant, which is currently not working.
The mayor of Los Silos, Macarena Fuentes Socas (CC), continues without clarifying whether she will finally sign the agreement that the island administration has requested from her since last April, which will allow a primary treatment and transfer of wastewater from Garachico to the regional emissary. and, furthermore, it would serve to stop the untreated discharge of the sewage from its own municipality and repair the deteriorated outfall. Fuentes has requested several legal reports to try to clarify the consequences of not signing that agreement and continuing the local commitment to extensive or natural purification. The Cabildo has already warned him that he will have to finance both the new treatment plant and the repair of the outfall alone. If you sign, the Los Silos-Isla Baja Platform has announced that it will denounce it. If you do not sign, you would expose yourself to another possible complaint for not stopping the discharges into the sea. It is between a rock and a hard place.
Fuentes assured THE DAY on September 21 that “the final decision would depend solely on those legal reports. Everything is in the hands of lawyers and we will see shortly what we have to do. Two weeks later, his decision remains unspecified. Local government sources (CC-PP) acknowledge that “conversations continue” between the legal services hired by the City Council and the CIATF.
The legal report of the secretary-controller of the Los Silos City Council recommends that the mayor sign the agreement for the treatment, transfer and discharge of wastewater to “avoid legal problems”, as revealed by the Los Silos-Isla Baja Platform.
Yes We Can Canary Islands
The Yes We Can Canaries coalition has come out in defense of the local government of CC and PP by demand that the Cabildo de Tenerife “end the blackmail of Los Silos” and “collaborate to start natural purification in Isla Baja, and not a model with high energy consumption facilities, rejected by the region, which will entail millionaire contracts that will only benefit certain companies.
The coalition group formed by Equo, Sí se Podemos y Podemos responds to the island government that Javier Rodríguez “has been untrue when stating that the solution to the spills could be from April 2021, because the schedule established in the proposal itself The agreement drawn up by CIATF indicates that the solution would be operational 15 months after its signing, sufficient time to execute the natural treatment plants agreed by the Cabildo for Los Silos, Garachico and Buenavista in plenary session on January 29, 2021. And in as for the rresponsibility for the management of the outfallCurrently it does not have a regional character, since it is under the entire responsibility of the Silense City Council.
Natural purification
These political formations insist that «natural purification for the region is a historical social and citizen demand, demanded by social movements such as the Los Silos-Isla Baja Platform, for which the Cabildo cannot continue to be involved in media debates that continue to lengthen the implementation of solutions ».
They add that “the waters that CIATF intends to discharge through the outfall would go without a secondary purification treatment, which is legally mandatory for populations with more than 10,000 equivalent inhabitants, since the population figure that these discharges would entail is currently very doubtful. , because this calculation has never been carried out with rigor and, in any case, it will most likely be exceeded in the immediate future due to the El Lamero urbanization, in Garachico ». The population of Los Silos in 2020 was 4,743 inhabitants and that of Garachico reached 4,869. Between both towns there are 9,612 neighbors, according to the latest updated data from the municipal register. A figure to just 388 people of that established legal limit.
“Only the problem is transferred”
The Los Silos-Isla Baja Platform insists that the agreement “only benefits Garachico, since what it does is transfer the waste problem to Los Silos”, and stresses that “if Los Silos renew its permit, expired since 2017, to to temporarily discharge until the natural treatment plant was built, there would be no illegality being committed because the population does not reach 5,000 inhabitants and current regulations allow it “. Another important reason for this group “why this agreement should not be accepted is that the law only allows the discharge of wastewater if there is no alternative”, which for this group “is still natural purification.”
