Since February of this year, Spain has, for the first time, a management plan for uses in the sea, which is called POEM. A document similar to the PGO of the municipalities, although it affects the country as a whole and was approved by the Ministry for Ecological Transition.
The POEM defines, for example, which spaces will be used for the installation of offshore wind power generation, the famous mills in the sea, a situation that has put both the San Miguel de Tajao Fishermen’s Guild in check and the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Provincial Federation of Fishermen’s Guilds.
Francisco Díaz is the manager of the first and Víctor Juan Díaz is president of the second, who is also president of the Candelaria Brotherhood. The projects that could go ahead in these areas would affect, they say, some 200 artisanal fishing boats along the entire southern coastline of Tenerife.
The plan is clear in that it defines two areas for wind energy on the island: to the east of the coast of the municipalities of Arico, Fasnia and Güímar and in Granadilla de Abona. To this should be added the projects of the Port Authority in the port of the latter, explains Katiuska González, the manager of the Coastal Action Group, a non-profit association that collaborates with the Cabildo de Tenerife and that considers that, if they wanted to define the use of the sea, it is “because we are heading towards its industrialization. In the coming years, it is expected that there will be many uses and conflicts of interest that are intended to be ordered ”, she assures.
A few weeks ago, together with experts from the University of La Laguna, they visited Portugal and, in Spain, Galicia, to see the places where the mills have already been placed.
“no fish”
Francisco Díaz reports that “in the areas where we were, there are no fish and the fleet receives money for not fishing. And all this despite the fact that the turbines are 20 kilometers from the coast”. That is one of the problems. In the case of Tenerife, the continental shelf is very short. “It is the worst case scenario”, says Katiuska González, who explains that “the platform is very short”, which means that the mills must be located no more than two kilometers away. And we must not forget that it is an electricity generation facility, with all that this entails: an important exclusion zone that no one can approach. All this with a height of 260 meters high.
“On the one hand, there is the exclusion zone, which creates a safety problem in one of the most complicated places in Tenerife to navigate, due to the wind, because it would force us to move away from the coast when the boats go from North to South and from South to North. On the other hand -says the provincial president of the brotherhoods- they would be damaging spawning areas of the angelshark and the sebadales that remain after the construction of the port of Granadilla”. “If to generate clean energy we have to destroy biodiversity, we are going badly,” he warns.
about fifteen mills
Víctor Juan Díaz estimates that there will be around 200 vessels affected by the future installation of offshore wind farms, since the situation will affect the entire southern coast of the Island, be it San Andrés, Santa Cruz, or Los Cristianos.
The calculations of the Coastal Action Group regarding the POEMs indicate that in the delimited area it would be possible to install, from the outset, between 11 and 12 mills, to which we would have to add between three and five in Granadilla de Abona. “This will affect fishing in a significant radius of kilometers, through the exclusion zone, and will affect biodiversity.”
“We are not against renewable energies -says Katiuska González-, but what they want to do in the Canary Islands is a crime. The mills are going to do a lot of damage to cetaceans, which are not sufficiently studied in this area, and to birds such as shearwaters”.
“In addition -he adds-, the POEMs are approved with a duration of six years. The first turbines will be just the beginning.”
Regarding the recent visit to Galicia and Portugal, he recounts that, as has happened in Viana do Castelo, “we are afraid that the fish will go away. They have had the experience. And that the exclusion zone is very wide”.
