?Canal Gestión Lanzarote, which has been operating the Montaña Roja desalination plant since it was seized in September 2014, has not paid for the electricity consumed since then. This is stated in the documentation accessed by La Voz, in which Club Lanzarote denounces that since they "expropriated" that plant, it has had to continue paying the electricity bills. During this time, the company has been demanding that Canal Gestión return that amount, and now the debt would already amount to more than 275,000 euros.
In a burofax sent last January to Canal Gestión, Club Lanzarote stated that this company is "benefiting from unjust enrichment, because it is not assuming the total costs of the integral water cycle and, however, it is charging its invoices for the supply of drinking water and wastewater treatment". When it sent that burofax, on January 26, Club Lanzarote put the debt at 179,537.29 euros. Now, after adding the latest receipts, the total debt would already be 275,214.47 euros, counting only the invoices up to the month of March.
In that letter to which La Voz has had access, Club Lanzarote warns that this requirement does not imply "recognition or acceptance of the current situation", that is, that it will continue its legal battle against the seizure of that plant and its subsequent delivery to Canal Gestión. "It will be decided in the courts of Justice", he says in this regard. But in the meantime, it demands that Canal Gestión pay the electricity bills generated by the production of water, "using the facilities and infrastructures" that they insist are their property.
In the burofax sent in January to the manager of Canal Gestión Lanzarote, Gerardo Díaz, Club Lanzarote urged the company not only to pay the debt, but also to "take the appropriate steps with the supplying company, so that the billing of the related contracts is made in the name of Canal Gestión Lanzarote".
Controversial seizure
The Montaña Roja desalination plant passed into the hands of Canal Gestión in September 2014, after the Insular Water Council decided to seize this facility. At the time, Club Lanzarote denounced that the measure was carried out "through the use of force and without any judicial order authorizing it".
According to the company, "the authorities presented only a resolution from the previous day of the president of the Consortium (Pedro San Ginés), taken without any procedure or hearing". In addition to the affected company, associations such as Asolan and different political parties criticized this measure at the time. Among other things, the opposition warned of the economic consequences that this could have for the institution, in case Club Lanzarote wins the lawsuit it has undertaken in the courts.
Like the one in Montaña Roja, there are other private desalination plants on the island, in areas where Inalsa did not reach to cover the demand in its day. Regarding why the Cabildo acted only with the one in Montaña Roja and not with the rest, San Ginés then argued that that was the only one that sold water to third parties (the residents in that partial plan).
For its part, Club Lanzarote then responded that as promoter and responsible for the Montaña Roja Urbanization Partial Plan, it has "the competence for the supply and supply of water". "The violent, not to say Bolivarian, expropriation carried out by the Consortium is not well understood", denounced the company, which assured that in the past, Inalsa "refused to make the supply in Montaña Roja because it understood that it was not its competence, pointing out that the competence corresponded to the promoter of the urbanization, according to what is established in the Partial Plan".
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