The Councilor for Water of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Domingo Cejas, has intervened in Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero to explain why the current Government Group of the highest island institution, made up of the Canarian Coalition and the Popular Party, paralyzed the purchase process of the land on which the Órzola water tank sits. In this line, he has stated that "the file does not comply with the procedure."
For 40 years this farm, owned by socialist councilor Benjamín Perdomo and six members of his family, has been exploited by the Water Consortium to supply the northern town without authorization and without paying its owners for it.
A final court ruling obliges the Water Consortium since 2018 to return the land and the constructions that are on it to its legitimate owners. The previous Government Group, chaired by the socialist María Dolores Corujo, and supported by the town councils of the Canarian Coalition, Teguise and Tinajo, agreed in 2022 to buy this farm of more than 174,000 square meters from the family, to avoid the loss of the constructions and the expense that would involve acquiring another land and reassembling the pipe system and the deposit. However, the transaction was never signed.
To clarify why the Water Consortium, now chaired by the nationalist Oswaldo Betancort, did not want to continue with the acquisition of the land, the councilor has assured that upon accessing the first institution, "as it cannot be otherwise, we see the file and it does not comply at all to be able to continue with the purchase procedure."
"There is a procedure in the file that, according to the technical and legal part of the Cabildo, says that the file is not correctly assembled at all," Domingo Cejas insisted during his intervention in the morning show Buenos días, Lanzarote.
"You will understand that I am not going to sign anything, nor the president, that goes against what the law itself says," Cejas indicated. In this line, he has shown himself open to start the file again. Although the Perdomo family, requested last March, after six years since the court ruling, the execution of the sentence that obliges the Consortium to return the land to them.
Cejas has assured that in the file "there must be a report of need and justification, it must comply with a formal appraisal by the technicians of the administration, of the administration here [in reference to the Cabildo of Lanzarote] ". In this sense, he assured that "if everything were perfectly assembled, no problem", implying that the purchase would have gone ahead.
In addition, the nationalist councilor has insisted that the role of Canal Gestión must also be taken into account, the private company that controls the management of water in Lanzarote. For his part, the socialist councilor, Benjamín Perdomo, has explained to La Voz that the justice system removed Canal Gestión from the case, understanding that a land that does not belong to the Water Consortium, but to private owners, should never have been transferred to a third party.
"I imagine that Canal Gestión will now state in its allegations what they understand, once they have to hand over the deposit due to the sentence, what are the alternatives they propose to solve," he stressed.
"We are putting things in their place and the reality on the table," Cejas remarked. The Water Consortium is assessing the alternative of acquiring another land and building a new water deposit, if an agreement is not reached with the family that owns the farm.
In addition, he has sent a message of tranquility to the residents of the northern town: "We are not going to allow the town of Órzola to run out of water. We have the obligation and the responsibility that the residents of Órzola have to have water, but that is this and anything else, prior to that we have to have another alternative."