The Secretary General for Territory and Biodiversity replies to Melchior that the works are decided "jointly" with the Autonomous Community
ACN
The Secretary General for Territory and Biodiversity, Antonio Serrano, assured this Thursday, in the Senate Budget Committee, that the Coasts and Hydraulic Works Agreements between the State and the Autonomous Community in force until January 2005 "in practice have not worked beyond 40 or 50 percent of what was planned" in their execution, so the new ones must contemplate other "operating structures" that allow "streamlining management".
Serrano said that the Agreements could be signed this year so that they could start operating next year and even pointed out that if this "more agile" management is not achieved, "we will achieve little" regarding the agreement between both administrations to equalize from 2008 per inhabitant in the Canary Islands with the average for the whole of Spain.
Serrano made these considerations in response to the CC senator for Tenerife and president of the Cabildo, Ricardo Melchior, who drew his attention to the non-inclusion in the State accounts for 2006 of budget items for the construction of desalination plants in Granadilla and Guía de Isora, in addition to four others in the area of purification and urban water supply in different parts of the Island (Adeje-Arona, Arona-San Miguel, Gúimar and Northwest).
The Secretary of State replied to the President of the Cabildo that "not only these works are not being carried out" and that their execution "is not decided by the Ministry of the Environment" but that the State and the Autonomous Community do so "jointly" in the joint commission provided for in the Agreements.
He also stressed that the Agreements "have remained in force" during 2005, since their clauses included the extension as long as the works contemplated in them were not completed. In this sense, he stated that the Coast item is increased by 6 percent for 2005 and the Hydraulic Works item by 5 percent.
Priorities
In this regard, Serrano pointed out that said Joint Commission is the one that has been deciding "the priorities", as well as which are "the actions that meet the conditions from the technical point of view and the availability of land" to be able to execute.
"It is a slow management that we are trying to improve with the signing of new agreements," Serrano assured while, in his reply to Melchior, he recalled that the final development of the execution of the Hydraulic Works Agreements corresponds to the Cabildos.
The president of the Tenerife Cabildo assured that the institution he heads had already pre-financed "works that correspond to the State" for a value of 100 million euros and asked the Secretary of State "to put a little more oil in the gear so that it works".
