Ecologistas en Acción Lanzarote has shown its rejection of the project that the multinational business group Red Eléctrica de España S.A. intends to develop in Lanzarote, from Playa Blanca to Mácher. This is a project that requires installing high-voltage cables along 18 kilometers, for which it is necessary to place 53 towers of 132 kilowatts that would reach between 44 and 49 meters in height, a level similar to 16-story buildings.
"This is a multinational in which only 20% of its capital is state-owned, while the majority percentage, 80%, is freely traded in international financial markets; in it, for example, Amancio Ortega participates, and operates in many countries, especially those located in South America, such as Peru, Chile and Ecuador," the environmental group has denounced.
This enormous project - which starts in Jandía, Fuerteventura - responds to the financial interest of the multinational to double the capacity to transport energy derived from fossil fuels and in the words of the company "provide robustness and flexibility to the electrical system".
"While this is the objective of the business group, for Lanzarote it means disfiguring the landscape of the south, the oldest on the island, the wild and scarcely altered soil," added Ecologistas en Acción. In this line, it points out that its installation, "also implies the disturbance of the natural and cultural assets that Los Ajaches treasure, Caldera Gritana, Caldera Riscada or the Temuime Valley, spaces with the classification of Natural Monument and Rustic Land of Landscape Protection in the Law of Natural Spaces and in the General Plan of Yaiza respectively". In this line, they have highlighted "the deadly incidence that power lines have for birds, so the consequences beyond the level of the subsoil with the fossil levels it contains, affects the assets located on the surface and in the atmosphere".
We note, they have emphasized the result of studies prepared by the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, who concludes that "living near high-voltage towers significantly increases the risk of developing cancer".
This testimony would also be supported by the Community Service on Research and Development, dependent on the European Commission, "which points out the negative incidence that high-voltage towers have on the large group of cancerous diseases".
The rejection of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands to the lawsuit filed by the City Council of Yaiza means that this highest body of the judicial power in the Canary Islands "does not protect the interests of citizens and condemns us to continue depending on oil and that the financial interests of this multinational prevail", added the environmental group.
"This project also responds to the claims of the Government of the Canary Islands to continue increasing the number of tourists arriving on the islands and that joins the claims of the Cabildo Insular of Lanzarote, whose councilor Jacobo Medina has vociferated every time he has the opportunity to develop the North-South axis and a multitude of road layouts more, such as the duplication of the Yaiza-Playa Blanca road", he took the opportunity to point out.
Ecologistas en Acción has urged the institutions to seek a new, novel and respectful model of energy production and transport "and for this we need this urgent energy transition not to mortgage the identity landscape, support of island life for millions of years, and the natural and cultural assets that we treasure since time immemorial".
"Let's finally think about the infrastructure that is required to install these huge towers and that we already had the opportunity to support in the previous project of this multinational that opened roads where there were none, disfigured and destroyed the existing ones with heavy machinery as it passed through Los Ajaches and abandoned some of the old towers", he added in a press release.
To conclude, he pointed out that "all this example of bad doing, of not loving this Island and not protecting its common heritage assets that are essential to continue growing as the people we are, makes Ecologistas en Acción position itself against what we classify as energetic barbarism".
