The Arrecife City Council has initially approved in the Plenary Session this Thursday the Municipal Ordinance of Use and Management of the capital's coastline, which the Council has described as "a very important step in municipal management", since "it will allow ensuring the care and proper maintenance of the marina".
As explained by the Councilor for the Environment, Carmen Delgado, "Arrecife finally has a municipal text that combines the multiple regulations that affect its marina." "Due to the idiosyncrasy of our coastline, until now it was practically impossible to determine what was allowed and what was not in this space, both for the user and for the agents of the Local Police", the councilor pointed out. It should be remembered that various public administrations interfere in the marina, such as the Port Authority, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food and the Environment, the Government of the Canary Islands, the Island Planning Plan and the Historical Heritage Service of the Cabildo, apart from the City Council itself.
The document provides a series of "rules of coexistence" on the coastline for both beach users and owners of boats and other nautical elements such as windsurfing, canoes, jet skis, etc. "Elements that coincide with bathers in bathing areas, and therefore, must acquire some rules of behavior with respect to the latter, the most vulnerable", they pointed out in the City Council. These rules of coexistence are dictated in the Coasts Law, which attributes "few direct powers to the municipalities" over the coastline, such as "taking responsibility for cleaning the Public Maritime-Terrestrial Domain and for the surveillance and security of users", according to the Council.
Includes rules of coexistence and penalties for some actions
Most of the Ordinance focuses on issues such as how to enter and exit the coast if you use boats in spaces where there are bathers; how to behave with respect to the hygiene and health of the coastal public domain; how to respect the indicative signs of the state of the sea, respect the indications of the flags on the beach or of the security agents and coastal lifeguards.
The document also includes the penalization of some frequent actions such as the abandonment of waste, the consumption of alcohol in public roads, the act of smoking and abandoning cigarette butts in the sand of the beach, making fires or camping. Many of these issues are penalized by the Coasts Law and the powers transferred to the municipal sphere.
"Given the importance of this area, from an ecosystem point of view, the novelty is also introduced that activities that are intended to be carried out in the Public Maritime-Terrestrial Domain and that may have an impact on the environment, must be accompanied prior to their authorization by an environmental report", added Carmen Delgado. These are activities such as street markets, stages, concerts and any that uses the sheet of water or contemplates the generation of waste that may end up in the water or on the coastal bank.