SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Sep. 1 (EUROPE PRESS) –
The central government has authorized in the Council of Ministers a new modification of the Direct Management Agreement of the state trading company Acuaes, which includes the incorporation of new actions throughout the national territory and among which are the works carried out in the Valle de The Orotava.
This new agreement includes the expansion and remodeling works of the regional treatment plant in which 25 million euros will be invested, the Cabildo reports in a note.
The president of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Pedro Martín, has indicated that this modification of the agreement allows the extension of the works in the WWTP of Puerto de la Cruz, which are part of an investment package “that will suppose an undoubted improvement in the treatment of waters on the island, which will place Tenerife at levels of wastewater treatment of no less than 90% and make an important qualitative and quantitative leap to avoid the sanctions that the Government of Spain is receiving, precisely, in the case of Tenerife, due to inadequate wastewater treatment.
The Tenerife Island Water Council is already drafting the project for the remodeling and expansion of the Valle de La Orotava regional treatment plant from April 1.
“Only the drafting of this project has a cost of 188,251.09 euros, it is expected to be completed in October of this year and it will be the base document that will serve to sign the corresponding agreement of the Cabildo and the Insular Water Council with Acuaes to proceed to the execution of the remodeling and expansion of the treatment plant in the valley of La Orotava following the same experience as in other areas such as Granadilla, Arona, San Miguel, Guía de Isora, Santiago del Teide, La Matanza, La Victoria and Santa Úrsula where Both sanitation and purification works are being carried out in most of these municipalities,” said the president.
The current treatment plant in the Valle de La Orotava is an old installation built in the 1990s and which is clearly “insufficient” to collect all the wastewater in the Valle de La Orotava, they emphasize from the insular corporation.
In this sense, since March 2, works have been carried out on main collectors, especially in La Orotava and Los Realejos, which are the areas with the greatest deficit in the sanitation network, for an amount of 9,721,012 euros.
These actions were awarded to the construction joint venture Daltre-Martín Casillas and are scheduled to be completed before December 2023.
THE MAYOR OF PUERTO DE LA CRUZ, SATISFIED
From the City Council of Puerto de la Cruz, its mayor Marco González, values the work that has been carried out by the different administrations so that this infrastructure has both a project and financing very soon.
“We are grateful that the insular and state administrations have endorsed this priority need for the entire Valley and our city, which is a vital step to be able to face the challenges of sanitation and water reuse with all guarantees,” he says.
The novelty of this expansion is that it will allow all these wastewaters to be regenerated for agricultural irrigation. The project also contemplates the expansion of water treatment from the current 6,700 cubic meters per day to 10,000 in a first phase, leaving a second phase of another 10,000 cubic meters planned.
“The strategy is to build new facilities on the land adjacent to the current Punta Brava WWTP so that they come into operation upon completion and then demolish the existing plant to build another new facility on top of it that will complete the 20,000 cubic meters per day. This plant will contemplate the most modern deodorization systems, although the entire process of the plant will be encapsulated as has been done in the Güímar Valley WWTP and is being done in the Santa Cruz de Tenerife WWTP”, indicated the island councilor of Sustainable Development and Fight Against Climate Change, Javier Rodríguez Medina.
In his opinion, “the great benefit is that all the treated water can be placed on the agricultural market and will allow zero discharge to be achieved on the coast, as is also planned in the seven treatment plants that are currently being carried out on the island.”
In the hydrological plan of Tenerife, currently in the approval phase, it is foreseen that these waters can be distributed from the area of El Rincón to the low island.
TERRITORIAL SANITATION SYSTEM
The agreement with Acuaes consists of works that will improve wastewater management in the areas of Granadilla de Abona, Tenerife Oeste (Santiago del Teide and Guía de Isora), Arona Este-San Miguel, the region of Acentejo and Valle de La Orotava, and which will provide the island with a comprehensive sanitation and purification system that will make it possible to definitively resolve the problem of non-compliance with European directives on water protection.
The sanitation model of the Valle de La Orotava is made up of a set of infrastructures that make up the homonymous Territorial Sanitation System, which allows wastewater from the municipalities of Puerto de la Cruz, Los Realejos and La Orotava to be collected and transported to the La Orotava Valley Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP), located in Puerto de la Cruz, where the purification and regeneration treatment of purified water is carried out for its reuse in agricultural areas from La Orotava to Buenavista included.
This new agreement complements and expands the sanitation and purification plan that Acuaes develops on the island based on the agreement signed with the Cabildo and the Tenerife Island Water Council, which provides for an investment of 170 million euros, co-financed by the European Fund of Regional Development FEDER 2014-2020, within the Pluriregional Operational Program of Spain (POPE).
Acuaes anticipates the financing of the works in its entirety, with 50 percent being recovered from the Cabildo within a period of 25 years, counting from the completion of the works, and also assumes the contracting and execution of the works, in addition to the direction and management until its completion while the operation and maintenance of the facilities will be in charge of the CIATF.
