The island president, Pedro Martin, ensures that “the court endorses our most sustainable model in waste management, which favors the circular economy and follows the criteria of the European Union (EU) ”. He emphasizes that “for the second time, the Cabildo is agreed and it is shown that it has acted in accordance with the rules and total transparency in a very complex process.” It recognizes “the rigor and excellent work of the technicians and specialists of the island service in the Sustainable Development area.” This gives way to the implementation of the waste management contract.
On March 23, the Governing Council of the Cabildo awarded the contract for the management of waste from Tenerife to the Unión Temporal de Empresas (UTE) constituted by Urbaser and FCC Medio Ambiente. The bidding process began in April 2019 and two other UTEs attended. Those formed by Cespa Gestión de Residuos SA and Martínez Cano Canarias SA, and the one formed by Valoriza Servicios Medioambientales SA and Syocsa Inarsa SA.
The two groups of companies that did not benefit from the decision and opted for public service management presented appeals and now the administration has dismissed them. The president of the council, Pedro Martín, underlines: «With these resolutions the brake on the execution of a very important contract for the Island, which had received two resources after its award, is put to an end. The Administrative Court has decided to reject both and agree with the recruitment table.
For the second time
Martín states that, “Finally, we will be able to work so that the Island advances towards a more sustainable model in waste management”. He adds that “for the second time the Cabildo is agreed and those who maliciously wanted to sow doubts about the procedure and the adjudication are pointed out.” This decision, said the island president, “unlocks the start-up of the new contract, which renews an unfavorable administrative situation for the island Corporation.” The current contract had been extended “since 2015”.
For his part, the insular councilor for Sustainable Development and the Fight against Climate Change, Javier Rodríguez Medina, has indicated that in this new contract “investments are foreseen both in the Tenerife Environmental Complex (CAT), located in Arico, and in the transfer plants –El Rosario, La Guancha, La Orotava and Arona– to modernize the facilities, always with the aim of improving yields and increasing recovery rates ”.
The counselor recalled some of the actions carried out in the current mandate, such as the removal of 8,004 tonnes of out-of-use tires that were accumulating in the CAT, at a cost of 2.1 million euros. «More than 8,000 tons of tires had been abandoned in the Complex since 2005. This meant serious environmental and landscape damage that we have reversed, “he added.
Improvement work
Rodríguez Medina referred to the work to automate the container classification and selection plant, for an amount of three million euros, to increase its treatment capacity and improve the efficiency in the separation of this waste. “Since 2009, Ecoembes was warning the Cabildo that the capacity to treat containers should be increased, because there are very large interannual growths in the selective collection of the yellow container and the plant had no capacity”. He explains: «We carried out an emergency work, because the situation was so extreme that Ecoembes valued the possibility of starting to send containers to Gran Canaria».
Javier Rodríguez also referred to the start-up of the biostabilized plant, abandoned and closed since 2018. After these works, it has the capacity to compost 96,000 tons per year.
