The Santa Cruz City Council has completed the administrative process for the creation and operation of its own environmental body that will speed up the deadlines and procedures for city plans and projects that require an environmental impact report. Yesterday, the Official Gazette of the Province (BOP) published the names of the members of this Municipal Commission for Environmental Assessment, made up of three people, which is incorporated into the organization chart of the Department of Public Services, but which will be closely linked to the area of Urbanism, and that you can start your work. Thus, as the Councilor for Town Planning, Guillermo Díaz Guerra, advanced, the first project that this commission is going to tackle is that of the motocross circuit and school planned in the Southwest district. “We have met with the promoters, and in the absence of correcting any documentation, the project is ready to submit it for environmental evaluation, as required by law,” explained the mayor.
The next issue that this environmental body will address is the Santa Cruz Protection Catalog, the return of which “we have already requested from the Government of the Canary Islands,” said Díaz Guerra. And it is that the Catalog, once finalized, was sent to the Government of the Canary Islands to carry out the environmental evaluation, but since this study has not yet begun, “we have asked that they return it to us so that we can do it ourselves.”
After these two projects, they will go through the environmental commission of all the planning instruments that Santa Cruz develops, including the progress of the General Management Plan (PGO), already approved, and the General Plan itself when the time comes.
The importance of having this environmental body lies in the fact that the terms of those documents that need to be accompanied by an environmental impact study can be expedited, and that, until the entry into force of the Land Law, was carried out exclusively by the Commission of Ordination of the Territory (Cotmac) of the Government of the Canary Islands, and that entailed long waits to approve planning in the municipalities.
‘motocross’
In the case of the first issue that the Municipal Environmental Assessment Commission, the motocross circuit and school, is a project that requires a provisional use license, but, in addition, must be accompanied by an environmental assessment study, which will be the one undertaken by the Commission. The project that has been presented is for the creation of a motocross circuit in the Southwest, on land that is located above El Bicácaro street. A children’s motocross school would also be created there.
The catalog of protected property of the capital will be the next document to be analyzed, since since the draft was sent to the Government of the Canary Islands to carry out the simplified environmental evaluation in the middle of last year, no file has been started, so Santa Cruz can claim it.
