SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Sep. 6 (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Cabildo de Tenerife, through the public company Balsas de Tenerife (Balten), has doubled the supply of irrigation water in the northeast of the island in four years, specifically in the towns of Valle de Guerra and Tejina, and in the municipality of Tegueste.
The island councilor for Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, Javier Parrilla, stated in a note that “this summer has been much harder than expected, and without reclaimed water this substantial increase would not have been possible”.
According to the island official, in the first half of 2022 the volume of water supplied increased by 210% compared to 2018, which means distributing 711,000 cubic meters to farmers in the region.
“This increase responds to the 170-hectare increase in the cultivated area of the region, one of the traditional agricultural areas that is recovering thanks to the joint effort with the municipalities of La Laguna and Tegueste,” he says.
Javier Parrilla emphasizes that these figures reflect the success of the strategy implemented from the beginning of the island presidency of Pedro Martín to promote reclaimed water to give greater stability and quality to the irrigation water supply.
In the case of Tegueste, there has been an increase of more than 14 hectares of fruit trees, mainly crops that require more water, such as avocado, and 43 hectares of horticultural crops have been incorporated (in some cases as an extension of the agricultural area and in others as reconversion).
The same is happening in the areas of Tejina and Valle de Guerra, where the area under fruit trees has also increased, mainly avocado.
However, the supply in these nuclei has had to be modulated, “generating shifts and limiting the volume of irrigation to the same amount supplied in 2021, a situation that they hope to be able to reverse in the month of October.”
With regard to the northeast region of the island, the manager of Balten, Ana Sánchez Espadas, assures that “intense work has been done to make possible a change of model similar to that of the south, but in this case supported by the deployment of the low-lying reclaimed water”.
In this way, reclaimed water has been promoted from the Northeast Tenerife Wastewater Treatment and Regeneration Station (EDRAR), located in Valle Guerra, to the Valle Molina reservoir, in Tegueste, which has allowed, together with other contributions , irrigate the entire Tejina, Tegueste and Valle de Guerra basin with excellent quality water.
Regarding the cultivated area, the cultivation map prepared by the Government of the Canary Islands, with the latest data from 2021, shows that the island has gained 1,100 hectares of agricultural area.
