The ruling of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC), which requires the Water Consortium to update the rates for the years 2020 to 2023, will not have practical effects since the Consortium has already complied with said judicial ruling, sending the rates to the Canary Islands Prices Commission, and this entity, dependent on the Government of the Canary Islands, ruled against said update.
The president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote and of the Water Consortium, Oswaldo Betancort, wanted to respond to the statement sent by Canal Gestión echoing that ruling, which upholds the appeal of the concessionaire of the integral water cycle, and that the only thing it agrees, according to the ruling, is that "the necessary measures be adopted so that the Water Consortium updates the rates corresponding to the years already expired (2020-2023, both inclusive)".
"The TSJC ruling obliges the Water Consortium to adopt measures that have already been processed. The request for review of rates for the period 2020-2023, which the ruling speaks of, has already been processed and submitted to the Opinion of the Canary Islands Prices Commission and this body, as happened with the rates corresponding to the years 2017-2019, ruled against the increase. Canal Gestión wanted to boast of a ruling whose effects are innocuous for the island of Lanzarote and La Graciosa."
"What is not innocuous for the island of Lanzarote and La Graciosa are the losses in water production exceeding 56%, and the daily supply cuts that we suffer. However, they do not issue any press release to report on that," Betancort clarifies.
On November 4, the Water Consortium of Lanzarote agreed to reject the request of Canal Gestión to review the rates for the years 2020 to 2024, after a report from the Canary Islands Prices Commission in October, in which, unanimously, it rejected the modification of rates for the public supply service on the island of Lanzarote and La Graciosa.
"The rates must be submitted to the Prices Commission"
The TSJC ruling, to which the statement from Canal Gestión Lanzarote alludes, stems from the execution of the ruling issued by the Contentious-Administrative Court No. 3 of Las Palmas, issued on February 9, 2021, and ratified by the TSJC in July of the same year. That ruling recognized the right of Canal Gestión to have the contract reviewed according to the formula of CPI+1, but clearly adds: "...The rates, once approved by the Consortium, will be submitted to the Canary Islands Prices Commission..." and that procedure has already been fulfilled.
Regarding the reference in the press release from Canal Gestión regarding the fact that the Water Consortium has not compensated it for its alleged economic imbalance, which it estimates at 35 million euros, the Consortium indicates that there is no ruling or resolution to date that recognizes Canal Gestión's right to receive any amount for that concept or any other. Precisely, the ruling of February 9, 2021, dismissed the claim for amount filed by Canal Gestión because it was necessary to first process the review of the rates and submit them to the Canary Islands Prices Commission to know if there has been or not the economic imbalance that Canal Gestión alleges.
The result of the processing, ordered in the ruling, is what we know, which rejected the increase in rates among other reasons because Canal Gestión has losses in water production exceeding 56 percent and that is what has prevented it from having profits.
Betancort also adds that "in the last Legislature the Cabildo of Lanzarote generously advanced 1.5 million euros to Canal Gestión on account of a possible future debt for the review of rates between the years 2017 and 2019, despite the fact that they never processed it. Given the circumstance that it has been rejected by the Canary Islands Prices Commission, therefore, there is no debt. This Cabildo and the Water Consortium are now also seeing themselves claiming that money from the concessionaire."
The Councilor for Water of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Domingo Cejas, has added that "there is no ruling, no order, nor any judicial pronouncement that obliges the Water Consortium to pay any amount for the non-update of rates. Not 35 million nor one euro. Canal Gestión is trying to alarm the citizens when we are right in the middle of a process to terminate a contract that has been systematically breached for years by the concessionaire and whose consequences are suffered by our population."
In the resolution of the Prices Commission, last October, it was argued that "as a consequence of the inefficient management carried out, which implies that each year greater percentages of unregistered water volumes are obtained, and the consequent damage that it would entail for the citizen to approve the modification of rates requested, without the latter being to blame for the problem, is why it is finally agreed unanimously, to reject the modification of the proposed rates."
