The Tenerife Association of Friends of Nature (ATAN) reported on Monday that it has filed a complaint with the Environmental Prosecutor’s Office of Santa Cruz de Tenerife for an alleged environmental crime related to the extraction and crushing of aggregates in the Tenerife municipality of Granadilla.
The extraction and crushing have been carried out for more than twenty years in the Tosca landscape, affecting the Horno or Piedras Caídas ravine and the small ravines of Las Arenitas and Cha Silveria, states ATAN.
In relation to the Horno or Piedras Caídas ravine, ATAN has stated that the “illegal” activities began with the massive extraction of all aggregates from the ravine’s channel and, once that resource was depleted, “leaving the entire bed buried under the rejected aggregates and crushed tosca, with the area unrestored.”
The affected area by this activity covers approximately 137,000 square metres (m2), adds ATAN.
According to ATAN, simultaneously, in that ravine, “the bases” of almost all the small hills were cut both sides of the ravine, on the hill or “knife” in the middle of the ravine, as well as in other small enclaves. It is impossible to rehabilitate them to their original state, covering this activity with a length of about 1,690 linear metres (ml).
ATAN states that the ravine has also been channelled, causing another new impact, with a first section with large blocks of tosca walls and a second section with loose material, totalling about 800 metres of course, which “clearly disfigured” the natural landscape and damaged the channel itself.
In the small ravine of Las Arenitas, continues ATAN, the “bases” of the existing hills (also called knives) have been cut to expand the area of operation, affecting approximately 1,190 linear metres and leading to the crushing of the existing tosca in the space, “possibly” for the use of pozzolana in cement manufacturing.
ATAN adds that in the small ravine of Cha Silveria, the impacts have increased in recent years, “with the hill (or knife) now affected, of high landscape interest and which until recently remained intact, with dumps of various waste.”
In this area, an aggregates treatment plant has been installed, with associated constructions, covering approximately 49,640 m2, notes ATAN.
ATAN considers that the damage caused in both the Horno Ravine and Las Arenitas Ravine occupies a total area of 186,640 m2.
The length of Toscón cuts is 2,880 ml, the channeling length of Horno Ravine is 800 ml, and the area of the Natural Zone is 105,930 m2.
ATAN continues that these figures give an idea of the high level of impact generated since the early 2000s on a landscape that, until those dates, remained intact, “noting that severe and irreparable” damage to a landscape of great landscape and geomorphological interest is still occurring.
ATAN explains that the complaint filed with the Prosecutor’s Office refers to these actions having “severely” damaged the soil, the geological formations that compose it, directly affecting the extraordinary tosca landscape, the original plant community, and the habitat of the protected fauna (mainly birds) existing in the area.
ATAN has also based the complaint on the protection the General Planning Plan (PGO) of Granadilla offers to this area, which sharply contrasts with the “little attention” the Granadilla Town Council has paid to enforcing its planning document:
The Horno or Piedras Caídas ravine is categorized by the PGO of Granadilla as rustic land with coastal protection from the coast to the El Médano – Los Abrigos road and as rustic land with landscape protection for the remainder up to the lower boundary with the south airport.
The Las Arenitas small ravine is categorized by the PGO of Granadilla as rustic land with coastal protection from the coast to the El Médano – Los Abrigos road and as rustic land with landscape protection for the remainder up to the lower boundary with the south airport.
Meanwhile, Cha Silveria small ravine, near the La Mareta cluster, exhibits, according to the PGO of Granadilla, three soil categorizations: in the lower section next to the road, it is rustic land with landscape protection, the intermediate section is rustic land with intensive agricultural protection and the other affected section is within the airport’s scope and categorized as rustic land with infrastructure protection.
ATAN adds that between the municipalities of Arico, Granadilla, San Miguel, Arona, and Adeje, there is a broad representation of different units of Tosca landscape, salic pyroclastic flows, fallout, and surges, resulting from the formation of the precaldera building, whose age geologists estimate between 170,000 and 1,800,000 years.
The Tosca is located towards the coast and the Jable towards the midlands, comprising a representation of about 40 more representative landscapes of tosca, including the Horno ravine and the Charca del Camello ravine, near La Mareta.
ATAN claims it is a unique landscape in the Canary Islands, which also has global significance due to its geomorphological uniqueness, a volcanic landscape transformed into an erosional one.
It explains that although only the “lunar landscape” in the heights of Granadilla or the renowned “Arco de Tajao” in Arico is recognised, the rest of the landscapes are indeed unknown and undervalued, despite their surprising beauty and scenic plasticity.
Six of them are wholly or partially in a natural area, Los Derriscaderos in Granadilla, Montaña Amarilla in San Miguel and La Caldera del Rey, and La Costa de la Caleta in Adeje, and partially Montaña de la Centilena and Montaña de Los Riscos. Even though most are on rustic land with municipal planning landscape protection, many suffer from various impacts, or even in the case of the Hondura ravine in Puertito de Adeje, “is doomed” to urbanisation.
ATAN notes that to grasp the degree of impact, it must be considered that approximately 4,000 hectares of Tosca landscape have disappeared, and another 4,000 hectares of Tosca landscape units are delimited.
It highlights that although seven of them are affected by urban developments, many of them suffer from land movements, aggregate extractions, open slope dumping, track openings, and greenhouse waste dumping.
