The Canary Islands Agency for the Protection of the Urban and Natural Environment (APMUN) has imposed a total of 6 fines in Lanzarote in the last five years for unauthorized discharges into the sea. The amounts of the sanctions for this type of discharge range between 1,500 and 90,000 euros, depending on the seriousness of the infraction. Only during the past year, this agency opened another 5 files for unauthorized discharges in Lanzarote.
The total number of fines from this agency, which depends on the Ministry of Territorial Policy, Sustainability and Security of the Government of the Canary Islands, throughout the archipelago amounts to 60 during the last five years. In most cases, they point out from the Ministry, the fines did not exceed 3,000 euros. Lanzarote is the third island where the most spills of this nature have been fined.
Of these sixty sanctioning files, the largest number, 27, were located on the island of Tenerife, 20 in Gran Canaria, 6 in Lanzarote, 4 in Fuerteventura and 3 in La Palma. "In most cases, these were unauthorized discharges caused by different local corporations, water companies and some hotel establishments," explains the Canarian Government in a statement.
The executive director of APMUN, Ana Batista, has pointed out that with the census of authorized discharges and unauthorized discharge points, which is currently being updated by the Vice-Ministry of the Environment of the Government of the Canary Islands, "the sanctioning activity of the APMUN will be facilitated, by allowing the detection and denunciation of possible infractions."
110 files, 5 for spills into the sea, in Lanzarote in 2015
During the year 2015, of the total of 1,739 files opened in this period, on 48 occasions they were for cases of spills into the sea; 33 of these were located in Gran Canaria, 6 in Tenerife, 5 in Lanzarote, 2 in La Gomera and 2 more in Fuerteventura.
Of those 1,739 files opened in 2015, in addition to the 48 for spills into the sea, 828 were due to irregularities related to waste, 502 for construction activities, 311 files for contravening the Laws of the Territory and Natural Spaces of the Canary Islands, 34 files contrary to the Coasts Law, 7 more for issues of Environmental Impact, 5 more for contravening the Packaging Law, 2 for Extraction of Aggregates, 1 for contravening the Pollution Prevention Law, and 1 more for non-compliance with the regulations regarding zoological parks.
By islands, Gran Canaria led the statistics in 2015 with 554 infractions, Tenerife follows with 546, Fuerteventura with 213, La Palma with 177, La Gomera with 119, Lanzarote with 110 files, and El Hierro closes the list with 20 files.
On the other hand, Batista recalled that APMUN collaborates "closely" with the Canarian Police, within the framework of an agreement signed in 2012, which has allowed the completion of 192 inspections related to spills in Tenerife and 188 in Gran Canaria, in order to detect spills that do not have authorization, infringing the Coasts Law.
Likewise, by virtue of these agreements, training actions have been undertaken in the two capital islands in the area of land-sea spills to members of this police group, following a training plan that included issues such as the development of prevention, the inspection of hazardous waste, integrated environmental authorizations, zoological centers or urban infractions.
