The Official Gazette of the Canary Islands (BOC) has published this Tuesday the Announcement of the Water Consortium of Lanzarote regarding the final approval of the modification of the entity's Statutes. It should be remembered that this novel regulation was approved at the end of August by the Extraordinary Assembly of the Water Consortium of Lanzarote, with the aim of modernizing its organization and ensuring management in accordance with the new challenges it faces.
In addition, this statutory modification is due to a legal requirement contained in the reform carried out in the Regulatory Law of Local Regime Bases by Law 27/2013. As recalled by the vice president of the entity owned by the Cabildo and the town councils, Domingo Cejas, “after almost five decades of validity, given the demographic evolution of Lanzarote and La Graciosa, with the consequent increase in the number of subscribers and the need to renew the hydraulic infrastructures, the Water Consortium required its adaptation in organizational and administrative terms, to be more effective and efficient”.
One of the aspects to highlight is that the new Statutes streamline the processing of files, both for project drafting and for the execution and supervision of the works. “As of today, there are more than 120 planned actions to address”, both in the supply networks and in purification and sanitation, as well as new network projects and supervision of works carried out by other administrations, the president of the Cabildo, Oswaldo Betancort, recalled in this regard.
Preferred dispatch: a more agile Consortium
The new Statutes definitively approved and published this Tuesday in the Official Gazette of the Canary Islands adapt the percentage of participation of the consortium municipalities, adapting it to the population of the same. This percentage affects the voting system given that the vote is equivalent to the percentage of participation, as well as in the event that the annual budget foresees the need for the consortium entities to make financial contributions.
In this case, the contribution is distributed in accordance with the updated percentage of participation. It should be remembered that, given that the purpose of the Consortium is to improve the island service, this percentage does not affect in any way the investment and project decisions that the Water Consortium of Lanzarote decides to face in each of these municipalities.
Likewise, the Statutes improve the regulation of institutional relations between the Consortium and the Administrations that comprise it. And thus, the hydraulic works that require administrative cooperation or license will now be applied “the urgent processing and preferred dispatch”, as they are priority execution works that are within the municipal competences.
The Assembly has greater prominence
To address the many and important future projects that the Water Consortium has on its agenda, the Statutes include novelties in the governing bodies and in the delegation of powers, with the intention of making the monitoring of the works more agile and collaborative. Thus, the Board of Directors is eliminated given the null virtuality it has had during the operation of the Consortium since its origins, granting greater powers to the Assembly.
In addition, the position of vice president is created, which will fall to the holder of the Water Council of the Island Council of Lanzarote, as has been done for years, de facto or with specific delegations.
Since its origins, the head of the Water Council has assumed and led the Water Consortium of Lanzarote, although the Statutes did not foresee it. And finally, the new regulations allow the presidency to delegate the exercise of certain powers to the members of the Assembly, to the Vice Presidency or to the representatives of the consortium entities.
These delegations can be generic or specific, related to a specific project or issue and will be limited to the time of management or execution of the project, or until the Presidency revokes the delegation. This is a very useful tool because these delegations allow, for example, the head of the Mayor's Office of a municipality in which projects are going to be executed to assume these interventions and supervise works, which means speeding up the execution of the same.
