Carmen Luisa Castro revealed yesterday on Onda Tenerife that “long before Izquierda Unida and Sí se puede denounced in 2017 the discharged in the Polígono de Güímar, I already warned the Insular Water Council and the Cabildo, in June 2014, that the submarine outfall was in very bad condition, and they answered me, in April 2015, that they could not divert any human resources to solve it”. This was stated by the former mayor of Güímar (2013-2019) and today the municipal spokesperson for the PP.
Luisi Castro is one of the four prosecuted for an alleged crime against the environment and prevarication, together with the current mayor of Candelaria, Mari Brito, and the former councilor of that same municipality, José Gumersindo García, and that of Arafo, José Juan Lemes, while they were exonerated from the case, According to the order released last week, the former Urban Planning councilors of the three municipalities, the former manager of the Mixed Compensation Association and three technicians. Previously, two former managers of the Insular Water Council and heads of the Deputy Ministry of the Environment had been left out of the process opened in 2018, something that surprises Castro: “I don’t understand how they have been left out, when the competence of the sewer, as I was able to demonstrate to the fines that came from the European Union, when it comes to an installation of two or more municipalities, are supra-municipal. Here the judge has caught the mayors who signed the reception (and Mari Brito) as scapegoats”, remarked the former mayor. In the same way, it maintains that “the businessmen omitted at the Polygon reception (June 13, 2013) that the authorization to discharge into the sea from the outfall had expired. What’s more, the reception as such was not made official until a year later, when they had to give the town councils an additional 700,000 euros to finish some auctions of the rehabilitation works, and it was there, in the analysis of these works, that our quantity surveyor The municipal government warned of the poor conditions of the outfall, which I immediately informed the Insular Water Council, without paying attention to us, in addition to finding out that the authorization had already expired.
The former mayor recognized that there was an obligation to create the Urban Conservation Entity before the reception (2012), but since it did not materialize, the Mixed Association (Sepes, Cabildo and La Caixa) is still responsible for maintenance. Castro will file an appeal before the judge’s order, as Mari Brito, mayor of Candelaria, will also do, as far as is known, before the magistrate, once he receives the qualifications from the Prosecutor’s Office and the private accusation (Pedro Arcila, representing of IU-SSP), indicate the date of the oral trial or the dismissal of the case.
Yesterday at the Cabildo, the insular director of Economic Development, Ermitas Moreira, met with three mayors of the Valley to work on the elaboration of the statutes of the polygon consortium, a figure chosen to ensure the proper functioning of the facility, the maintenance of the Edari and the discharge regulations, for which there is already a draft.
