The Water Consortium knew that the private treatment plant of the Costa Papagayo Partial Plan posed a risk to the "safety and health of workers and the environment", as reflected in the technical reports that La Voz has now accessed. However, far from taking measures against the promoters, Pedro San Ginés signed an agreement with Juan Francisco Rosa in July 2017 for the Consortium to take charge of these facilities, which the businessman himself had acknowledged were "a torment" for him and that could lead to the imposition of "sanctions for ecological crimes".
After signing that agreement, and without having demanded that Rosa resolve the "serious deficiencies" of the treatment plant, the Consortium was pressuring Canal Gestión for two years to take over that plant as part of the water cycle concession. This is also revealed by the minutes of the meetings of the monitoring committee of the contract with the Madrid-based company, which San Ginés had kept hidden and which this media outlet has now been able to learn about.
"It is impossible to take over the facilities in this state, without first correcting the serious deficiencies," warned the representative of Canal Gestión in one of those meetings, held in December 2018. "No Canal worker will enter facilities that are not suitable or that do not comply with safety and health measures," he reiterated in that and other meetings, based on the reports that had already been made.
Private works with public funds
The response of the Consortium - which at that time was chaired by Echedey Eugenio - was to demand that Canal be the one to carry out the necessary investments in that plant of Juan Francisco Rosa. In addition, this demand was also added to the demand that it take charge of the works on the water supply and sanitation network that had not been completed by the promoters of this partial plan.
Both demands stemmed from the agreement signed by San Ginés with this and three other partial plans of Playa Blanca, by which the Consortium committed to assume 50% of the cost of the works corresponding to the promoters, including also an agreement to "compensate" Rosa with more than 60,000 euros for the use of the submarine outfall of his partial plan.
Before the signing of that agreement, it was Juan Francisco Rosa himself who defended its benefits before the partners of the Urban Entity of the Costa Papagayo Partial Plan, of which he was president as owner of the illegal Princesa Yaiza hotel. The minutes of the meeting held in May 2015, which La Voz has accessed, reflect how Rosa explained the important advantages that this agreement he negotiated with San Ginés had for them.
"It has been a torment"
"The Costa Papagayo Collaborating Urban Entity has flatly refused for years to hand over its water treatment facilities and infrastructures to Inalsa - now Canal Gestión - because we understood that it is a benefit for the supply of irrigation water for the common areas of the entity and for the gardening of the hotels," Rosa began by stating.
However, he then explained that at that time it was convenient for them to get rid of these facilities, because they were facing "constant communications and investigations by the public administration, looking for operating deficiencies". "We do not believe in persecutions, but almost, almost yes, because of what we have experienced. It has been a torment in administrative matters on top of the entity and always present the very high fines for ecological crime," added Rosa, who more than a decade ago was charged with alleged crimes against the environment with the discharges into the sea from that treatment plant, following a report issued by the Ministry of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands.
Although at the meeting held in 2015 Rosa stated that these facilities were "efficient", he also acknowledged that they should be "updated" and that they were not approved to current regulations. Thus, he defended the agreement he negotiated with San Ginés, which implied that the Consortium would cover 50% of these expenses, which he estimated at around 500,000 euros. In this way, although he explained to the rest of the businessmen that they would have to pay the other half, he added that they would "recover the investment" within a year, because "the maintenance costs of the entity would be much lower". In this regard, he detailed that they could dispense with the staff who worked at the plant, that they would stop paying high electricity bills and that they would also eliminate the costs of the "breakdowns, replacements, maintenance and breakages" that they faced "frequently".
"Urgent" investments to "guarantee safety"
In the midst of the struggle with Canal Gestión - when the company refused to take over Rosa's treatment plant - the Consortium acknowledged in a report, signed by Domingo Pérez in December 2018, that there were "a series of deficiencies in the facilities" and that they required "urgent" interventions to "guarantee the safety and health of workers and respect for the environment". Only for these urgent works he pointed out that 32,589 euros would have to be allocated, although to date there is no record that they have been executed or that measures have been adopted.
For its part, Canal Gestión also questioned that the data it had was based on a visit made to the plant four years earlier and that, therefore, they had become "obsolete". "It has probably deteriorated with the lack of maintenance in the last year, after signing the agreement," said the company's representative at the meeting held in December 2018. In addition, he criticized that in that agreement that San Ginés signed with Rosa there had been "no supervision mechanism so that this situation would not occur".
The company also insisted that these works on private infrastructures were not in its contract, and again warned of the deficiencies. "Of course, prior to the start of operation by Canal Gestión Lanzarote, it must carry out all the necessary works to safeguard the occupational safety of workers," replied the manager of the Consortium, Domingo Pérez.
"It is a matter of the obligation to comply with the provision of the essential service, not to modify the contract. It is an obligation to assume the provision," added the lawyer whom San Ginés appointed to be part of this body, Eugenia Torres, while Echedey Eugenio also asked Canal to "assume the infrastructures and then present what they deem", if he considered that he should claim that money from the Consortium later.
Threats of sanctions to Canal
In that meeting they began to threaten Canal with imposing sanctions, both if it did not take over Rosa's treatment plant and if it did not carry out the works in that partial plan and in the other three with which Pedro San Ginés had closed agreements. For that second investment, San Ginés asked Canal to deduct it from other items planned in the investment plan established in the contract.
The tension over this issue continued to increase in the meetings of the contract monitoring committee held in 2019. In the one last April, Domingo Pérez proposed to impose on Canal a penalty of 640,000 euros, corresponding to the amount of the estimated value of all the works that were claimed in the partial plans of Costa Papagayo, Castillo del Águila, Las Coloradas and San Marcial de Rubicón.
Thus, a file was opened to sanction Canal and the period was initiated for it to present allegations, which continued "in the study phase" when the commission met again in May, shortly before the end of the previous term of Coalición Canaria. In that meeting, they pointed out that the Consortium was already "assuming the cost of the Edar and sanitation facilities of Costa Papagayo, according to agreement". That is to say, that the expenses of these infrastructures would already be being paid with public funds, without having been assumed by Canal Gestión. For its part, Canal insisted in that last meeting that its staff was not going to enter those facilities, "given that they do not comply with the regulations".
