Environmentalists denounce that the irrigation works in Tinajo "circumvented environmental control"

The Ecologistas en Acción Lanzarote collective publicly denounces that the agricultural irrigation project for the municipalities of Teguise and Tinajo has "circumvented the mandatory environmental controls".

As the organization warns and *La Voz* has been able to verify, the Council of Ministers approved in February 2025 to exclude the environmental impact assessment request for the project. Therefore, the environmental assessment published in 2024 never materialized. 

The environmental collective indicates that the only motivation behind this "serious omission" has been "administrative haste": "To accelerate the works so that they finish before June 30, 2026, an unextendable deadline" in order to collect the subsidy granted by the European Union.

The environmental collective directly points to this agreement of the Council of Ministers of February 4, 2025, by which it was resolved to "exclude the project from environmental impact assessment".

During the breeding season of the hubara, the guirre, and the Saharan sandgrouse

Ecologistas en Acción denounces that this decision was made "knowingly" that two previous environmental impact studies existed, drafted in 2022 and 2024, which unequivocally demanded the total cessation of works between March and July to protect the breeding season of particularly vulnerable and threatened avifauna, such as the great bustard, the Egyptian vulture, the cream-colored courser (Saharan sandgrouse), the stone-curlew, or the trumpeter finch.

Despite these technical warnings that were invalidated by the Council of Ministers, the works —which involve massive earth movements for the installation of kilometers of pipes and the excavation of two large reservoirs— did not stop during the breeding season. The collective denounces that the works continued actively in the El Cuchillo area, an area located within and next to the Special Conservation Area (SAC) Chinijo Archipelago and in the vicinity of the SAC Malpaís del Cuchillo, flagrantly violating protection recommendations.

Uncertainty about the wind turbine and the brine well

Likewise, Ecologistas en Acción describes the installation of the project's wind turbine without an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) as being of "extreme seriousness." Lacking this rigorous control, the group warns that it is unknown whether the wind turbine is located in the ideal site and if it has the necessary technology to avoid bird collisions, as well as to mitigate the noise pollution that will directly affect the residents of La Santa.

Another critical point that causes deep concern is the complete absence of assessment of the environmental impacts that the brine filtration well from the desalination plant will generate. The organization alerts about the high porosity of the soil in the area and recalls the disastrous precedent of the Telde desalination plant, in Gran Canaria, whose filtration well had to be urgently closed due to serious soil contamination caused by constant brine overflows, an oversight that ultimately forced a costly investment to build an underwater outfall.

A very dangerous administrative precedent

For Ecologistas en Acción, the political decision to exempt a project of this magnitude from environmental assessment, with the sole objective of shortening deadlines to avoid losing public funds, sets an "extremely dangerous" administrative precedent.

The organization concludes by warning that "this maneuver breaks legal and environmental certainty," sending the message that "promoters and political leaders can bypass laws that protect the natural environment and people's health as long as they consider that the economic or temporal justification of a subsidy is above the law."