The Arico City Council denounces before the Environment Prosecutor “the existence of numerous deficiencies and evidence of environmental crime” in the island landfill, as stated in the report prepared by the municipal area of the Environment after the aerial inspection of the facilities of the Environmental Complex made by the company Evalua.
From his technical report, “clear evidence of irregularities in the treatment and disposal of the waste that reaches the landfill” is derived, by verifying the direct entry to the dumping cell of trucks loaded with unprocessed and unsorted waste.
In an official statement, the municipal government of Arico explains that the contracting of the external report is due to repeated neighborhood complaints in recent years, in which they point to the landfill as a source of pests, odors due to the emanation of gases, affection of crops and surrounding farms or the environmental contamination of the area by the plastics that the wind carries from the Environmental Complex, among other damages.
urban inspection
The purpose of the City Council was to carry out an urban inspection to check whether the new facilities planned for this site have been created, taking into account that “to date” there is only knowledge of the existence of a composting plant, a separation and classification of containers and an environmental classroom, in addition to the discharge cells.
In order to have the corresponding authorizations to enter the Environmental Complex, the local government informed the Cabildo de Tenerife, which gave a week’s margin to carry out the review. The City Council communicated the date of the internal inspection, with the forecast of carrying out an aerial inspection by drone flight the day before in collaboration with the Environment and Urban Planning, Local Police and Civil Protection technicians.
The Cabildo did not authorize the entry of an evaluation company to inspect the interior of the Environmental Complex
These flights were carried out on January 30, “with the sole objective of visualizing the state of the plots for environmental planning purposes and gathering the necessary documentary support for subsequent inspection and reporting.”
The images obtained made it possible to verify that, in a period of one hour, “31 trucks arrived at the Environmental Complex, 29 loaded with waste, of which 20 went directly to the dumping cell without going through the processing and classification treatment plants. -one”.
The waste dumped in the cell
As the reports say, “the contents of these trucks consisted of milled asphalt, sorted plastics, and unseparated municipal solid waste. The figures indicate that, of 534 m3/h of incoming waste, 400 m3/h of waste was transferred directly” to the cell. “There was also evidence of joint dumping: sanitary waste with plastic, plastic with non-hazardous waste and, in turn, piche and construction with non-hazardous waste,” says the Arico City Council.
After the facts exposed in the external report of the Evalúa company, the municipal area of Environment issued its own and concluded “the existence of numerous deficiencies and evidence of environmental crime.”
The day after the aerial inspection, they denied the evaluating company entry to the Environmental Complex to carry out the ground inspection of the evaluating company, although they did allow access to municipal public employees “under the express instructions of the Cabildo that the action It would have the category of inspection, but of visit “, despite the prior formal communication made. “It was not possible to confirm or verify the status of the facilities or the registration of management data,” says the statement from the Consistory.
Communication to the Canarian Government
Taking into account “the magnitude and environmental, social and political significance of the conclusions obtained” and reflected in the corresponding reports, the Arico government denounces these facts before the Environmental Prosecutor’s Office so that it can proceed to investigate the management carried out of the waste in the Environmental Complex of Tenerife and that determines the legal framework of said practices, responsibilities and measures to be taken. Likewise, the local authorities report that this situation “has been brought to the attention of the Canary Islands Agency for the Protection of the Natural Environment and the General Directorate of the Fight against Climate Change and the Environment of the Government of the Canary Islands.”
The mayor of Ariquero, Sebastián Martín, reiterates that the mismanagement of the Environmental Complex is having a negative and direct impact on Arico. “We have verified with this inspection the degree of affection, from the environmental point of view, to our municipality, since garbage continues to be buried, waste treatment procedures are skipped, the landfill continues to grow creating cells and the regulations are not applied. policies for recycling and reusing waste on the island of Tenerife”.
“The landfill continues to grow, creating cells and the policies for recycling and reusing waste on the island of Tenerife are not applied”
Given the evidence, the councilor highlights that “today, all the facts detected and reflected in the municipal technical reports and the external support company have been transferred to the Environmental Prosecutor’s Office, in case there could be administrative infractions, and the Canary Islands Agency for the Protection of the Natural Environment as the competent body for the inspection of landfills, which is the Department of Ecological Transition of the Government of the Canary Islands.” All of this “in the face of proven evidence of systematic non-compliance in environmental planning and management of waste,” says the mayor.
Andrés Martínez, in his capacity as Councilor for Urban Planning and the Environment, defends the “scrupulous and meticulous management of everything related to the environment and, obviously, with waste management.” For this reason, the municipal spokesman for the Popular Party also recalls that “for many years we have been demanding compensation for the municipality” for the large presence of the landfill on Arico soil.
“We will continue to claim proper waste management and the compensation that Arico deserves”
The deputy mayor brings up a study carried out by the University of La Laguna which included “an assessment of everything that the insular plant causes the municipality”. Martínez clarifies that this external report now commissioned by the City Council is the one that allows, “officially”, to assess the waste management that is carried out in the PIRS and to evaluate “how and what are these damages and conditions that it causes to Arico”.
The councilor explains that the Consistory tries to “improve the garbage collection model itself, and it is understood that the rest of the municipalities also do the same, but if proper management is not done in the landfill, it is useless. We will continue to claim proper waste management and the compensation that Arico deserves”.
“The Cabildo plays with the largest source of employment in Arico”
The Councilor for Economy and Finance, Víctor García, maintains that “the Cabildo plays with the largest source of employment in Arico. The management of the landfill has been disastrous and has worsened the municipality environmentally and economically”. The also spokesman for the Canary Islands Coalition points out, in line with his PP counterpart, that “to the environmental disaster is added the constant refusal to compensate the municipality, which deserves the fair and equitable treatment that has been lost in recent years.”
The Cabildo confirms the discharges, but defends them as legal
“Nothing is done wrong. Everything is regulated by the Cabildo and by the Canarian Government as competent for the control and surveillance of environmental complexes”, says Javier Rodríguez Medina, island councilor for Sustainable Development and the Fight against Climate Change. He defends that the management conforms to the Integrated Environmental Authorization and describes as “almost institutional histrionics” the complaint before the Prosecutor’s Office by the Arico City Council.
He maintains that the direct discharge “we know about it (also the regional Executive), it is detailed in the daily, monthly and annual service sheets, as well as quantified” in tons, “because every truck that enters the Environmental Complex goes through a scale” .
In his opinion, it was “reckless” to fly a drone over aeronautical easements, in the case of this facility, “without informing the Spanish Aeronautical Authority. It is a grave danger.”
Javier Rodríguez claims his “almost obsession with establishing the recycling industry in Tenerife. We cannot continue the same as during the last 37 years, because there is enough technology to transform waste into new resources”.
Although the Environmental Complex requires more development for its transformation, “we are better than ever.” An affirmation that supports the management carried out during the mandate, such as removing 8,000 tons of tires abandoned in the compound since 2004, starting up the bio-waste plant “that had been stopped since 2018 due to poorly done works by the Executive of Fernando Clavijo and Blanca Pérez », the emergency works that stop burying 76,000 tons of organic waste per year and eliminate the leachate from the Guasiegre ravine, in addition to the award of the waste management contract, expired since 2014.
