Tenerife will promote, until 2024, the strategy to end wastewater discharges with more than 220 million euros in treatment and regeneration, between the investment of the Cabildo and the State. “This investment will mean spending 40% of the residual water that was blocked in 2019 to purify more than 80% of the water generated on the island,” according to the president of the Cabildo Pedro Martín.
Pedro Martín highlighted “the budgetary and technical effort in terms of water purification and regeneration that has been launched in the last two years and that is unmatched by anything that has been done on the island so far.”
The president recalled that in this mandate the largest agreement in the history of the Cabildo in this matter has been formalized with Aguas de las Cuencas de España (Acuaes), through which more than 170 million euros will be invested, of which 85 million They are contributed by the island corporation to improve and start up infrastructures that fix a historical problem in Tenerife.
In addition to the 170 million Euros of the agreement with Acuaes, there are 30 million Euros of investment from the State in the Santa Cruz treatment plant, in addition to almost 20 million from the Cabildo for the works of the urban and industrial treatment plants in the Güímar Valley with a investment of 12.7 and 6.9 million euros, respectively, the Fasnia treatment plant, with 1.1 million, 1.5 million invested in the La Campana EDARI and the six million that the Polígono de Granadilla will allocate to the start-up of its treatment plant, which joins other interventions such as the deodorization of the ETBAR of Playa de las Américas, with 1.5 million; and purification actions in Isla Baja. “They are, in short, works that respond to an environmental and moral responsibility with the citizens of this island,” he said.
“We are not talking about promises or projects, but about works that are being carried out and others that will be carried out shortly, and that will definitely help to solve this serious problem of discharges”, pointed out Martín, and proof of this is “this Valle de Guerra WWTP, through which it has been possible to keep the submarine outfall inactive”.
As for the example given by the president, he recalled that “the Valle de Guerra submarine outfall, in La Laguna, does not discharge a single liter of water into the sea after the start-up of the region’s treatment plant, which regenerates all the flow it receives and redirects it towards agricultural use”.
“This is a clear example of the orientation that we wanted to apply to the management of wastewater on the island, we have managed to take advantage of 100% of the flow of wastewater and convert it into usable water for irrigation, street washing, etc. ”, emphasized the president.
In addition, he stressed that among the objectives of the Cabildo is the start-up, in 2024, of 12 treatment plants in operation, of which “currently five are already working, another five in the process of construction and two in project, compared to the only four that existed in 2019.” “But it is that, almost every month, other actions are launched that improve these aspects, such as recently the Candelaria Pumping Station that collects wastewater from Punta Larga to the Plaza de la Basílica, and also the works that will be carried out in this underground driving plaza, the Tabaiba pumping station, among others.
For his part, the Councilor for Sustainable Development and the Fight against Climate Change of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Javier Rodríguez Media, has indicated that “we are immersed in ambitious and fundamental projects for the island that will renew the wastewater treatment model and avoid European sanctions related to mismanagement of something so important for sustainability and the environment”.
