Los Silos yields and accepts the transfer of wastewater from Garachico

The mayor of Los Silos, Macarena Fuentes (CC), plans to report this Friday, December 17, the details of this decision, which has already been described as “a betrayal of the people” by Los Silos-Isla Baja Platform, the group that had previously threatened the mayor with denouncing her if she signed this agreement. The Los Silos agreement with the Ciatf was an essential requirement for the putting into use of a work already executed, which cost more than one million euros and will allow primary treatment and transfer of wastewater from the neighboring municipality of Garachico to the regional emissary, located on the coast of Los Silos. In addition, it will serve to stop the untreated discharge of the sewage from the Silense municipality itself and repair the deteriorated outfall.

The refusal to sign the agreement put the development of the county system on the ropes, but it also put the Los Silos Town Hall, since he was forced to make large investments to end some spills that could also lead to a complaint against the mayor, in this case by the competent authorities. The decision not to sign the agreement left the solution to the serious problem of the discharge of wastewater into the sea solely in the hands of a city council that manages a budget of just 5 million euros and has suffered, for years, a difficult economic situation. Without an agreement, the town was forced to face alone the creation of a treatment plant and the repair of the outfall.

The Councilor for Sustainable Development and the Fight against Climate Change of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Javier Rodríguez (PSOE)He had described as “nonsense and unreasonable” that the Silense City Council refused to sign the necessary agreement to put into operation the work of channeling the sewage from Garachico to the regional outfall. The Cabildo of Tenerife warned that it would need “At least 55 trucks a day” to be able to remove the sewage from Garachico and take it to Valle Guerra (La Laguna), which would cost “more than 13,000 euros every 24 hours.”

At the end of September, Rodríguez warned that “there is a project worth one million euros, which is already finished, tested and ready to be put into operation, but we cannot use it because the Los Silos municipal government does not sign the agreement. It is a three-way agreement that has the approval of the Ciatf and the Garachico Town Hall, but Los Silos does not sign, so the discharges and contamination are maintained ». With the approval of Silence, the solution proposed by the Cabildo may begin to be applied in the short term.

While the municipal decision is being held in the Cabildo, Los Silos-Isla Baja Platform is radically against it and has already started a strong campaign through social networks to show its frontal opposition to an agreement that they say “tries to impose the reception of sewage from the municipality of Garachico in exchange for crumbs: a feasibility study of a natural treatment plant in Tierra del Trigo and in Erjos, and the financing of the drafting of the El Polvillo natural treatment plant ”. This group insists that “they do not pay for any treatment plant, they only finance the writing of a project.” In his opinion, “this is really ridiculous and humiliating. And in exchange they sell our coast and sea to become the toilet of the Isla Baja ».

The group, which has led the mobilizations since 2017 against the intensive district purification system of the Baja Island, has asked the members of the Silense Government group to “leave the communication group” of the platform, “since their line of work and priorities no longer coincide with those of our association and, consequently, it would be essential that they did not know the strategies that we will carry out to save our coastline ».

«If our mayor”, Macarena Fuentes (CC), “She felt pressured by superior forces such as the Cabildo, the Ciatf or her own party, the solution was to summon her people to an urgent meeting, in the presence of the media, to tell what was happening. At the moment they could have fought hand in hand. The easy thing was to sell and condemn this municipality to an unequal agreement, without precise dates or defined budgets to get the natural treatment plants, which would save us from the coming disaster. the end. This town has been betrayed. The smart thing to do would have been to resign and be at the side of the citizenry, “says the platform.