The Inalsa Works Council believes that the request is intended to supply the future Playa Blanca golf course.

The PP requests the construction of a desalination plant of 10,000 m³ per day within one year

The Popular Party, without justifying the power cuts caused by the company Unelco, believes that the cause of the lack of water supply in some areas of Lanzarote is none other than the insufficient production of the plants ...

August 12 2005 (04:05 WEST)

The Popular Party, without justifying the power cuts caused by the company Unelco, believes that the cause of the lack of water supply in some areas of Lanzarote is none other than the insufficient production of desalination plants. For this reason, it asks the Cabildo, through a motion, to in turn urge the Central Government to make available an item of 9.6 million euros, already contemplated in the National Hydrological Plan, to install a new productive infrastructure with a capacity of 10,000 cubic meters per day of desalinated water within a maximum period of one year.

The financing of the new plant, planned for Janubio (near Playa Blanca), would be fully assumed by the Ministry of the Environment. Precisely because of its location, the spokesperson for the Works Council of Insular de Aguas de Lanzarote (Inalsa), Manuel Plasencia, dared to declare that the objective of the PP's proposal is to satisfy the irrigation needs of the future golf course in the tourist town of Playa Blanca. "What they are least interested in is the population and they should not come up with strange stories now," said the representative of the Inalsa workers vehemently.

According to the analysis made by the PP of the data provided by the Cabildo itself, the reserve capacity that Inalsa has, to satisfy the needs of the Island in case of emergency, is 1.7 days and not 3 days as declared by the CEO of the company, Mario Pérez. Thus, the popular ones also demand that the storage capacity at least become 7 days.

The councilor, María Dolores Lurardo, expressed her discomfort because such an important issue for the Island was debated in the board of spokespersons of the Corporation and not in the island council plenary session. Luzardo asked that the CEO of Inalsa reveal, as well as made public the power cuts of Unelco, the water cuts made by the public company detailing the areas and hours of the same.

Popular initiatives

Apart from demanding Unelco to guarantee the electricity supply, the national deputy Cándido Reguera will present an amendment to the State budgets in the Chamber to execute the works with celerity, although Loli Luzardo proposed as an alternative the pre-financing of the infrastructures by Inalsa if the item is not hooked in the economic plan of 2006. The PP thinks that in addition to increasing the production and storage capacity, it is necessary to develop a multi-year plan for the replacement and creation of desalination plants and obsolete supply networks. According to Inalsa, 30 percent of the water it produces is lost in the more than 400 kilometers of distribution networks it has installed throughout the Island due to the deterioration of the pipes.

Reading of the data

Cándido Reguera said he was surprised by the data provided by the board of spokespersons of the Island Council, in which it is recorded that in the month of July 21,500 cubic meters of water were no longer produced, because if the declared storage capacity is 3 days, equivalent to 120,000 cubic meters, and if the first amount of water was no longer produced and the second was stored, "there was no reason for these cuts to occur". "The water cuts are due to the low production capacity. Currently we are practically consuming what is produced," added Reguera.

"They are outdated"

With this phrase, the spokesperson of the Works Council threw the Popular Party's analysis to the ground. Manuel Plasencia asserted that, "before thinking about the gentlemen of the golf course", the first thing to do is to fix the distribution pipes as soon as possible and enable a 250,000 cubic meter tank to store water in the Maneje neighborhood of Arrecife. "It is clear that the problem lies in improving these infrastructures and not in producing more". Plasencia recalled that the Popular Party had time and space to expose its reasons when it was represented on the Board of Directors of Inalsa and did not do so.

Likewise, he valued the effort made by the public company to expand the production of desalination plants with its own technology. The Works Council made it clear that its concern is that water regularly reaches all the neighborhoods of Arrecife and of course all the residents of the Island and the fields of Lanzarote. The current daily production of Inalsa is 62,000 cubic meters per day.

On the other hand, the Works Council wants to clarify, in view of versions published in the media, that at no time has it requested that technicians from the company Unelco come to evaluate the energy situation of Inalsa. The workers are in favor of this work falling on the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Technology of the Government of the Canary Islands. However, the engineers of Unelco were in the Inalsa plants this Wednesday supposedly at the request of Mario Pérez.

Most read