The General Assembly of the Lanzarote Water Consortium approved this Wednesday the agreement signed with the State Mercantile Society Aguas de las Cuencas de España, S.A. (ACUAES) for the execution and operation of sanitation and water purification actions in Lanzarote.
The president of the Island Council and of the Consortium, Oswaldo Betancort, states that “in a few months we have complied with the processing of this necessary and urgent addendum to give the green light to the agreement that will involve an investment of 37.5 million euros to modernize and improve the water sanitation network on our island. Absolutely necessary works to which a response had to be given.”
Specifically, the signed agreement includes the improvement and expansion works at the Arrecife wastewater treatment plant, for an amount of "16.5 million euros", and at the Tías station for "21 million euros more", which will be financed, in a 50%, with FEDER funds." Betancort also points out that the agreement between the Water Consortium and Acuaes "will improve what was initially planned since it will include, in a second addendum, a new sanitation network that will collect and transport the discharges from the towns of Yaiza, Uga and Puerto Calero to the Tías WWTP".
"At the limit of its capacity"
Currently, the Arrecife and Tías treatment plants "have been at the limit of their capacity for more than five years", mainly due to the increase in population and the lack of foresight in expansion and improvement actions since their construction in the early 2000s. This situation has been increasing over time and as a result of this overexposure to the limit thresholds of their productions, 8,000 cubic meters per day at the Arrecife station and 6,000 cubic meters per day for Tías, has led to non-compliance with European Directive 91/271/EEC on the treatment of urban wastewater, which also led to two infringement proceedings for each of the stations.
"Neglect and demagoguery of the PSOE"
The president of the Cabildo, Oswaldo Betancort, regrets that "the Socialist Party, which governed for the past four years, is once again using demagoguery to criticize when things are done well and thus cover up its neglect and management incapacity." "The Government that I preside over," adds Betancort, "has achieved in a short time what the Socialist Party was unable to do in the last legislature, which they left abandoned in the drawer this important and necessary agreement to solve the serious water sanitation problems that we suffer in Lanzarote."
In this sense, the president insists that "it is absolutely regrettable how the inaction of the Socialist Party greatly harmed the interests of the people of Lanzarote and defends itself by attacking when things are done well and this agreement is finally signed that will solve the needs of Lanzarote in terms of water."
"The inaction of the socialist government was already noted by the state company Acuaes in the minutes of the Monitoring Commission of the agreement of November 23, 2023, stating that the draft addendum to the agreement was sent a year earlier (approximately in November of the year 2022), without any progress being made by the Cabildo in its processing. Likewise, Betancort recalls that the former president Loli Corujo and the previous manager of the Water Consortium "also left the minutes of the previous commission, of November of the year 22, unsigned, making clear their lack of interest in this project and their neglect in general."