The Parliament of the Canary Islands unanimously approved this Wednesday a Non-Law Proposal presented by Podemos, which will urge the regional government to explore the aquifer found in Timanfaya. The discovery of this aquifer was announced on May 25 by the Podemos group in the Cabildo of Lanzarote, based on the reports commissioned from the engineer Carlos Soler and the University of Barcelona.
Now, the Parliament has unanimously demanded that the second phase of the study be carried out, as proposed in Soler's report. Specifically, the text agreed upon by all groups asks the General Directorate of Water of the Government of the Canary Islands to "carry out the necessary studies as soon as possible to determine the quantity and quality of the waters of the Timanfaya aquifer, guaranteeing the necessary corrective measures to minimize the environmental impact of the soundings that will have to be carried out".
A similar initiative was taken by Podemos to the Plenary of the Cabildo of Lanzarote on June 6, but the government group voted against it. At that time, the president, Pedro San Ginés, asked for the text of the motion to be modified so that the existence of the aquifer was not taken for granted. "If it is true, and the water has been there for 300 years, it can wait another month," said San Ginés at the time. And after seeing his proposal to change the text rejected, he announced that he would present a new motion in the next Plenary, which will be held this Friday.
Finally, the proposal has been supported before by the Parliament of the Canary Islands, where all the groups, including Coalición Canaria, have given their favorable vote to demand that the Government carry out the studies that allow determining "the quantity and quality of the aquifer waters".
"Could turn energy and sustainable policies on the island upside down"
The PNL approved by the Parliament points out in its explanatory memorandum that "we could be talking about a bag of renewable water every year with the rains and that it could represent a considerable part of the annual production of desalinated water". "We are facing the possibility, therefore, of giving a decisive turn to energy and sustainable policies on the island," he adds.
In addition, it recalls the steps that have been taken so far by the Podemos group in the Cabildo of Lanzarote. The first was to commission a report from the engineer Carlos Soler, who had been maintaining the hypothesis of the existence of this large body of water under Timanfaya for two decades, without having managed to carry out the relevant studies until now. Soler, who works in the Water Directorate and is one of the leading experts in the search for groundwater in the Canary Islands, then established a roadmap, the first step of which was to carry out a geophysical study on the ground.
That study was also commissioned by the Podemos group, although in this case, to finance it, it had the collaboration of the Cicar group and the César Manrique Foundation. And that report, which was carried out by the professor at the University of Barcelona Albert Casas, came to confirm Soler's thesis. "From its conclusions, the need to carry out some soundings to determine both the quality of the water and its exact quantity is justified," says the text of the PNL approved by the Parliament, which thus defends the need to move to the second phase of the roadmap set by Soler.
That second phase involves carrying out soundings in the field, which are what they are now demanding from the Government of the Canary Islands. "The cost of this research represents a ridiculous investment if we compare it with the benefits that the extraction of groundwater from the south of the island would bring," underlines the Podemos proposal, which adds that "the possibility of having drinking water independent of desalination processes is a milestone for Lanzarote, without forgetting the new opportunities that are opening up for agriculture on the island". In addition, it adds that it would also "result in obvious economic savings" and that it "could considerably lower the price of water for citizens".