One of the island's privileged tourist environments has had to be sealed off this weekend due to sudden black water spills.
It was 10:30 a.m. this past Saturday when users enjoying Playa Dorada, in the Playa Blanca area, had to be evacuated by agents of the Local Police and members of the Yaiza Fire Department. The promenade had become a perfect sieve for sewage that descended from the promenade through the facilities near the Hotel Princesa Yaiza.
The beach, evacuated
As soon as the fact was known, the beach had to be evacuated in its entirety, and immediately, several technicians from the southern City Council appeared to study the reasons and effects of the phenomenon. In principle, it seemed that the spills would not reach the sea, but only the sand, but the Security Forces acted without hesitation and formed a kind of wall with the help of mechanical shovels that managed to stop the dark flow.
While at first the suspicions hovered over the aforementioned lodging complex, and even over the Papagayo Shopping Center, sources from the City Council presided over by José Francisco Reyes confirmed to this newspaper yesterday that the origin of the sewage lies in the breakage of several sewers in the municipal sanitation network, which other sources denied. It is a "breakdown caused in a part of the sanitation network of the Costa de Papagayo urbanization," the Council reported. The agents of the Local Police of Yaiza made the corresponding report that will be sent to Inalsa, the public company directly linked to the Cabildo of Lanzarote.
After sealing off half the beach, the complete closure became necessary to avoid possible infections among bathers, who abandoned in just over half an hour a scenario in which the suffocating heat of Saturday could be gladly combated until then. Already during Sunday and despite the decreed closure, there were several, around 40, unwary tourists who violated the seal and decided to risk it by accessing the coastal spot despite the sewage that invaded the beach.
The Cabildo accuses Yaiza
The Councilor for Territorial Policy and Environment of the Cabildo, Carlos Espino, expressed his "deep concern" for these spills originated "presumably by a hotel establishment in Playa Blanca", and considered "an irresponsibility that, despite the situation of the beach, it was being used by numerous bathers without personnel from the hotel establishment itself or the southern City Council alerting users". Espino announced that "we are going to collect as much information as is necessary and we are going to make every effort to ensure that this situation does not happen again".
El Guincho's version
On the other hand, according to the information gathered by the president of El Guincho, Ecologists In Action, the source that caused the contamination of the beach came from the Hotel Princesa Yaiza, having started the spill from Friday night, so during the morning of Saturday the beach remained open to the public without taking precautionary measures or warning users.
In the opinion of the ecologists, the spills of sewage, both in Playa Dorada and in places on the southern coast of Lanzarote, are not a new issue, since they have been denounced on numerous occasions by this association, without the necessary measures having been taken until now to prevent these events from constantly repeating themselves, for which "it can be concluded that the Yaiza City Council turns a deaf ear to the contamination of its waters and beaches".
The City Council disagrees
For the moment, the version that the southern City Council has made public states that Yaiza needs the sanitation network in Playa Blanca to be managed by Inalsa, which depends on the Cabildo. The Council disagrees with both the association El Guincho, Ecologists In Action, and the Cabildo itself, who point to the Yaiza City Council as responsible.
The Councilor for Urban Planning and Environment of the Yaiza City Council, José Antonio Rodríguez, said after learning of the events that the officials of the Consistory are the first to regret these circumstances and recalled that, in the absence of Inalsa personnel "our operators intervened to stop the consequences of the breakdown and we recall that the integral management of water, including the sanitation and purification network, corresponds in this urbanization to Inalsa".
Rodríguez therefore asks the Councilor for Territorial Policy of the Cabildo, Carlos Espino, "to demand that his Government and party colleagues in Insular de Aguas de Lanzarote clarify the deficiencies and breakages of the network of a part of the sanitation network in this urbanization for which they charge the corresponding fees"