In that meeting between the highest representatives of San Juan de la Rambla (PSOE), La Guancha (PP), Icod de los Vinos (CC), Garachico (CC), El Tanque (PSOE), Los Silos (CC-PP) and Buenavista (SSP-CC) An agreement was reached to request an urgent meeting with the island’s councilor for Sustainable Development and the Fight against Climate Change, Javier Rodríguez (PSOE), and the president of the Cabildo, Pedro Martin (PSOE), to try to find an agreement that avoids the restrictions that currently affect the seven municipalities.
After the meeting, the slogan was to maintain media silence to reduce tension with the Cabildo and promote agreements. Outside of microphones, several leaders acknowledged to EL DÍA their discomfort over the statements of Javier Rodriguez in this newspaper last Monday, October 25. Then, the counselor pointed out that the problem of water shortage in the seven municipalities of the Northwest would not be solved with access to more resources from other regions, but by acting before the very serious problem of losses of drinking water in the municipal networks of these localities. Medina assured that in the water balances made by the Insular Council of Waters of Tenerife (CIATF) no surpluses are detected in other areas and he asked the Northwest leaders to “look inside” and take measures to end enormous water losses that range “between 32% in Garachico and 65% in El Tanque and San Juan de la Rambla ».
Several mayors question the figures of losses in the network contributed by Rodríguez and consider them as “exaggerated” or directly “out of date.” The counselor explained that leaks waste 65% of the water in El Tanque and San Juan de la Rambla, 56% in La Guancha, 55% in Los Silos, 38% in Buenavista and 32% in Garachico. Some yields in the supply networks that, in Rodríguez’s opinion, “are really poor, since we are talking about municipalities that lose two out of every three liters of water.” Losses that the highest political official of the Tenerife Water Council also linked to the direct management model of these towns, the lack of investment in modernization and what he described as “the culture of the plumber.”
