The closure of beaches in Tenerife due to the presence of the bacteria E.coli It is almost a summer tradition. Especially in the month of September, when the sea calms down and the stillness of the waters facilitates its appearance in the bathing areas. But how does a bacterium found in the human intestine reach the sea?
On a bad country and with toxic discharges to the coast: these are the environmental attacks of the largest industrial estate in Tenerife
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Pablo Martín is a marine biologist and in front of the Playa de los Abriguitos, in Abades, he explains the problem: “Just 200 meters from the shore and about nine meters deep there is a pipe continuously expelling all the shit that comes directly from the houses of the town. It is an illegal outfall that expels sewage that has not even gone through a purification process. “This is a point very frequented by divers. The barley fields that exist in this area make this space a very attractive place for all kinds of marine fauna, especially for turtles. It is a pity that we are carrying it, ”he laments.
Already on the shore, he puts on his fins and pulls up his wetsuit while commenting on how common these spills are along Tenerife’s 336 kilometers of coastline. After a few minutes swimming, Pablo finds the famous emissary. His finger points to the exact spot on the bottom, but the cloudiness of the water at this point makes it hard to see clearly. “Be careful about swallowing water now,” he warns. After a while, a large yellowish cloud appears. Now you can see the mouth of the pipe. Pablo descends with his underwater camera and records a few close-up shots; He shows that he has good lungs. The cloud dissipates and the particles of the fecal remains can be seen with the naked eye. A few minutes later, an even bigger one comes out again. This doesn’t stop.
During the swim back to shore Pablo realizes something: the waves are dragging all these particles to the bathing area. Indeed, as the shore gets closer, the water seems to get dirtier. Outside, some ladies dry off after their morning bath while they talk about what awaits them for lunch today. “The worst thing is that all these people probably don’t know what’s going on down there,” Pablo says resignedly.
The CIATF plan
The Island is surrounded by a multitude of outfalls that discharge into the Atlantic, without purification, the waters that the population discards by flushing the cistern, scrubbing the dishes or putting in a washing machine. In 2015, when the last Tenerife Hydrological Plan (PHT) was drafted, still in force, only 11 of the 31 municipalities on the island charged a fee for treating the sewage generated by their neighbors. Said plan attributes these shortcomings to two factors: firstly, to the economic inability of a good part of the municipalities to deal with the maintenance of the treatment plants. Secondly, to the secondary role that sanitation has traditionally occupied in the priorities of the municipalities.
These are some of the arguments used by the Insular Water Council of Tenerife (CIATF) to bet on district-level treatment systems that are under its management, since, by being able to take advantage of the economy of scale, they consider them more efficient than the municipal facilities: “The level of cost recovery is higher in large cities and in the regional systems managed by the CIATF”, is assured in the Hydrological Plan of Tenerife.
However, some city councils do not consider this option the best for their municipalities and oppose this industrial and regional system that the Insular Water Council intends to impose. This is the case of Antonio González (Yes You Can), mayor of Buenavista del Norte. Since 2017, its city council has been demanding, without success, that natural treatment plants be installed in its municipality in order to stop dumping wastewater into a kind of cesspool. “On the Low Island [como se denomina a esa parte de la isla de Teneirfe] that economy of scale does not occur. In the end, the volume of water to be handled is very small. The proposal of the Insular Water Council is to kill flies with cannon shots”, he criticizes.
The regional system promoted by the CIATF involves treating the wastewater from different municipalities in a single location. To carry out this option, not only the treatment station itself is required, but also the connection of the different municipal sanitation networks of the region and a pumping station that drives the water to the treatment station, which in In the case of Isla Baja, it would be located in the Buenavista neighborhood of Las Canteras, at an altitude of 160 meters above sea level. Once purified, the water would be sent to the sea through an underwater outfall.
This would mean, therefore, an investment in infrastructure and energy costs notably higher than those of natural purification, which uses the force of gravity and the photosynthesis of plants to treat the water. “Sustainability – and we have been saying it since 2017 – is not only that the energy used comes from a green source; Sustainability is to use the least amount of energy possible”, argues González. The mayor recalls that the costs of the purification process will end up being assumed by the neighbors in the water bill, so the cheaper it is to purify, the less the citizens will have to pay.
The Low Island Fight
But Buenavista is not the only municipality that defends natural purification against the industrial one of the CIATF. In this area of Tenerife there has always been a consensus among local corporations regarding this issue. And it is that Isla Baja is one of those Tenerife regions that does not yet have a system that purifies its waters. The municipalities that make it up (Buenavista, El Tanque, Garachico and Los Silos) have been sanctioned on several occasions by the European Union due to non-compliance with Directive 91/271/CEE, which regulates urban wastewater discharges.
“We are not the sewer of Isla Baja”, reads one of the many posters that hang from the balconies of the historic center of Los Silos. Last year the bathroom had to be closed famous puddles on the coast of Silense for “health reasons”, after some dead fish appeared floating inside. The need to purify the water that is discharged into the sea through the Charco de la Araña outfall is an issue that has been the subject of debate in the municipality for more than five years. In 2017, the Los Silos – Isla Baja Platform was born, which since then insistently calls for the installation of extensive treatment plants in the region.
Far from meeting this demand, the mayor of the Silense municipality, Macarena Fuentes (CC), is now betting –after having positioned herself against it– to connect the Garachico wastewater with that of Los Silos. This change in its position materialized last December through the signing of an agreement with the CIATF, by which the discharge of wastewater from Garachico through the underwater outfall of its municipality is allowed.
This agreement represents an advance within the Council’s roadmap, which aims to connect the different sanitation systems in the region to unify their wastewater. However, the nationalist mayor does not consider this to be an impediment to advancing towards the alternative that they have been demanding for years on Isla Baja. From Buenavista, González is calm. He says he has the word of his counterpart from Silense to continue working in the line of decentralized treatment and believes that the signing of the agreement was “something inevitable”, since it was included in the first cycle of the Tenerife Hydrological Plan.
The signing of the agreement with the CIATF cost Fuentes the criticism of a large part of the residents, who have carried out various protests against what they consider a “betrayal of the people” and “a concession to the interests of the CIATF.” On the afternoon of last Thursday, January 27, around 200 residents gathered in the Plaza de La Luz, in front of the Los Silos Town Hall, to protest against the decision of the government group and demand the installation of a natural treatment plant.
Through an online appearance, Fuentes (CC) and his government partner, Raquel González (PP), assured that the agreement is a provisional solution that will regularize illegal dumping. And it is that this pipe that has spent decades expelling sewage into the ocean is not authorized by the Government of the Canary Islands. In addition, after an observation made in 2017, this administration recognized an impact on the marine environment: “In the surroundings of the area where the spill occurs, a deteriorated bottom is observed due to the presence of waste from it.” However, legalizing does not mean purging. With the signing of this agreement the problem of discharges is not solved, it is only achieved that the consistory does not continue receiving fines.
An interested Council
The guide to Extensive Wastewater Treatment Processes, published by the European Commission in 2001 and based on experiences with these systems in France, does endorse natural treatment for small and medium-sized communities. According to this document, “the investment costs of extensive processes are generally lower and the operating conditions are less difficult, more flexible and more economical in terms of energy”. In addition, he highlights: “these techniques need less staff and less specialization than in the case of intensive ones”.
In spite of everything, the Insular Water Council goes ahead with its idea of implementing a regional network of industrial treatment plants without paying attention to the peculiarities of each municipality. And it is that the CIATF maintains strong links with the private sector. Its current manager, Javier Davara, worked for years for companies in the sector such as the Agbar Group and the multinational Suez, which last year took full ownership of the Canaragua company, operator of the water cycle in several municipalities in the Canary Islands.
On the other hand, the Board of the Insular Water Council is made up of a total of 50 people, of which only 24 are public representatives compared to 26 from the private sphere. Among the latter there are representatives from companies in the water sector, such as Emmasa or Aqualia, from the engineering sector, such as Imtech, and from agricultural and business organisations.
The mayor of Buenavista, Antonio González, does not deny the historical relationship between the CIATF and the private sector, but he believes in the professionalism of his manager: “I don’t dare say that” [que las decisiones del Consejo Insular de Aguas estén condicionadas]”I think that Javier Davara is a highly qualified person for the position he holds and I have great respect for him on a professional level”, he says.
However, he does believe that the roadmap followed by the CIATF is out of date with respect to the sustainability objectives pursued: “That planning was carried out a long time ago, in another context –especially from the energy point of view – and I think that the intention is to continue betting on an approach that is completely out of date, at least for this part of the island”, he assures.
