The president of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Pedro Martín, announced yesterday that next week the industrial wastewater treatment plant (Edari) of the Polígono de Güímar will be put into operation, in a testing period, with which “another milestone will have been covered of the plan of stages so that service can be provided to the industrial estate and the problem and the fear that it will be closed will be over”, once the discharges can be treated biologically.
Pedro Martín, who was accompanied by the island councilor for Sustainable Development, Javier Rodríguez, announced that the three affected municipalities, Candelaria, Güímar and Arafo, whose mayors, Gustavo Pérez, Juan Ramón Martín and Mari Brito, respectively, also participated in the visit to the plant, “they are not going to have to pay any money for the transfer of discharges, because the Cabildo is going to take care of that cost (it can reach 150,000 euros)”, since a percentage of the residual water they will have to be transferred to the Polígono de La Campana until the works in Arafo are finished. Counselor Rodríguez Medina had commented days before that this payment corresponded to the town councils, as treatment is a municipal competence, something that the three mayors denied in the same visit to the press, considering that it is a regional treatment plant, attending to what marks the Hydrological Plan of Tenerife.
In this regard, the island president pointed out that this transfer to El Rosario has been underway since March 1 and that this operation “has also been done in the past in other treatment plants when there have been problems.”
The La Campana treatment plant was carried out without the agreement of the Cabildo government group, although it finally went ahead thanks to the majority of the opposition. This meant that one and a half million euros were allocated to this facility, capable of holding 250 cubic meters of discharges per day, almost those that are now being transferred in vats from the Güímar Valley Wastewater Treatment Plant. The mayor of Arafo, Juan Ramón Martín, explained that they have tried and managed to “find solutions to the problems” and recalled that “the Valle de Güímar Industrial Estate was once in the news because of the disunity and now it is in the news because of the union of the municipalities”.
The mayor of Candelaria, Mari Brito, recalled that the municipalities have worked together with the Cabildo, with the Deputy Ministry and with the City Council of El Rosario, showing their maximum involvement and commitment to be able to reach the agreements that have allowed this intermediate situation until that the milestone of the stage plan scheduled for February 28 and delayed in the execution of the Edari work be met. In addition, she indicated that they trust that the milestones will be met and that they will not have to reach these extreme situations that they have experienced in recent weeks due to the delay in the works.
Lastly, Gustavo Pérez, councilor of Güímar, was cautious when announcing the final solution, “until March 28 arrives and everything is up and running”, admitting that “not paying for the vats is also a relief for the residents of the three municipalities.
