The Lanzarote Water Consortium complies with the roadmap of the declaration of water emergency and will increase between 10 and 15% the production of drinking water in Lanzarote and La Graciosa.
The president of the Cabildo and of the Lanzarote Water Consortium, Oswaldo Betancort, and the manager of the UTE Canaragua-Elmasa, José Quesada, the contract for the supply of 5,135 reverse osmosis membranes for the production plants of Díaz Rijo and Janubio for an amount of 2 million euros.
“The increase in production is one of the fundamental objectives that we set with the water emergency, and it also means taking a transcendental step in the modernization of the service, the sustainability and the efficiency of the system”, Oswaldo Betancort pointed out.
The bidding process for the contract was made at the end of March and was awarded in June to the UTE Canaragua-Elmasa, which presented the best offer with an extension of the number of membranes for the same budget and with a considerable reduction in the delivery time of the material.
The contract specifications, with an amount of 2 million euros, established the acquisition of a minimum of 3,200 membranes and a delivery time of the material not exceeding 5 months. The successful bidder offered 5,135 membranes, with the same budget, and reduced the delivery time of the membranes from 5 months to 76 days.
90% of the membranes will be changed
The Minister of Water of the Cabildo de Lanzarote, Domingo Cejas, highlighted that “these new desalination membranes mean increasing production between 10 and 15 percent and allow us to change 90% of those we have in the two production plants”.
The manager of the UTE Canaragua-Elmasa, José Quesada, pointed out that “the membranes are already on their way in a ship from Korea and will arrive in Lanzarote, presumably, in a month. It is a material from the manufacturer LG and they are of an advanced technology and of great efficiency in the desalination process”.
The two million of the contract, signed this morning, are financed by the Water Consortium thanks to the subsidy granted in December 2024 by the Ministry of Territorial Policy, Territorial Cohesion and Water of the Government of the Canary Islands within the framework of the processing of the water emergency in Lanzarote and La Graciosa.
The Lanzarote Water Consortium, on the other hand, is finalizing the process to tender the installation of a new production frame of 10,000 cubic meters for the Lanzarote III plant, which come from another subsidy of 5 million euros from the same autonomous department and that will mean a new leap in the improvement and flow of desalinated water.
It should be remembered that the declaration of the water emergency, approved by the Island Water Council of Lanzarote in November 2024 and which came into force after its publication in the BOC in February, includes three types of measures to be adopted to reverse the situation: the increase in production, those related to the recovery of volumes through the control and reduction of losses in the distribution networks and the transversal measures of water saving and wide impact.