The Minister of Territorial Planning, Jose Antonio Valbuenahas assured this Friday that the Adeje City Council should indemnify the company promoting the Cuna del Alma project in the event that the file initiated by his department concludes that the local corporation granted the license without the pertinent environmental impact study.
In statements to Cope Canarias collected by EFE, Valbuena explained that both the Environmental Impact Law and the old Land Law require a simplified environmental impact study for holiday resorts outside urbanized landas is the case of Cuna del Alma, in the Puertito de Adeje.
He has pointed out that since it is a simplified study The competent “environmental body” is the Adeje City Council, and, therefore, it would have to assume possible compensation for having “caused damage” to the company by issuing an administrative actin this case the granting of a license, without meeting all the requirements.
Valbuena has affirmed that if said process had been carried out, that “it would not have been complex”, “we would not be at this point”, and added that “in the Canary Islands it is very important that any investor knows that environmental legislation does not have to seek shortcut to go faster but the shortcut that is more guaranteed”.
“Environmental legislation must be complied with in the defined line, no matter how tortuous it may be. There are no shortcuts”, stressed the Minister of Ecological Transition, Fight against Climate Change and Territorial Planning, against the argument of “legal uncertainty” that is generated by these files and the possible “flight” of investors in the Canary Islands.
On the approach of the promoters of Cuna del Alma to continue with the works on 98% of the land, since the presence of the protected plant sad viperwhich caused the precautionary stoppage of the works, only affects the remaining 2%, has referred to the absence of the environmental impact study.
In it, a “rigorous” analysis of all the plant species present must be carried out and thus avoid “damage that is impossible or difficult to repair.”
It has indicated that it does not have data on whether the sad viper it is in “more or less” 2% of the surface of the project and has indicated that the study process is complex, since it is conditioned by “the life cycle of the plant species”.
“The problem” in the case of the sad viperthe counselor continued, is that “it cannot be transplanted” like a palm tree, and has denied that the discovery of this species has been used as an “excuse” to paralyze the project in a precautionary manner.
He has admitted that as a backdrop to the Cuna del Alma project there is “a debate on the model of occupation of our coastal spaces”, in which he does not enter, but that his department has acted based on a complaint about the presence of the sad viper and the absence of an environmental impact statement.
Regarding the La Tejita hotel, José Antonio Valbuena has confirmed that the project is stalled after a demarcation was carried out as a result of which and with the land that he would have available to occupy it, the developer “seems that the investment is not profitable” .
He has indicated that it is up to the Granadilla City Council to see what is done on that land that has been liberalized, and in the event that the promoter definitively renounces the project, it will be necessary to avoid “a skeleton remaining.”
If that were the case, Valbuena has admitted that the different competent administrations would have to compensate the promoter.
