The General Assembly of the Water Consortium approved this Monday by majority vote to grant the request of Canal Isabel II, parent company of Canal Gestión, to temporarily halt the procedure to terminate the contract for the comprehensive water cycle management in Lanzarote while it negotiates the transfer of the contract to another company in the sector.
With the votes against from the mayors of Tías, San Bartolomé, and Haría, and the abstention of Yaiza, the majority of the Assembly approved granting Canal Isabel II a period of 3 months to negotiate the transfer of management to another operator, always conditional on the approval of the operation by the Water Consortium, as stated in the contract signed with Canal Gestión in 2013.
"The Consortium has the final say. It's not about replacing one company with another; the new concessionaire will have to invest in improving production and reducing service losses. If not, we will proceed with the termination of the contract with Canal," says the president of the Consortium and the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Oswaldo Betancort.
The Lanzarote Water Consortium's proposal, in response to the current operator's request to postpone the contract termination procedure, stipulates that the new concessionaire must invest 35 million euros during the first 5 years, reduce desalinated water losses to 30 percent (currently exceeding 56 percent), and that annual tariff increases be limited to the CPI plus one point, based only on variable costs and not the total bill, which also includes fixed costs.
### "Canal Isabel II Now Takes Us Seriously"
The Water Councilor of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Domingo Cejas, believes that "the enormous effort and work carried out by the legal and technical services of the Cabildo and the Consortium has paid off and has made Canal Isabel II now take us seriously. They have gone from threatening the members of the Consortium with taking legal action if the contract was broken to asking us for time to negotiate their exit."
In the General Assembly of the Consortium held this morning in the Island Council, a comprehensive 104-page technical and legal report was presented by the legal officer of the contract. It rejects the allegations made by Canal Gestión in the procedure to terminate the contract, and reiterates that the termination is due to serious breaches of the contractual agreement, such as the execution of the Exploitation Plan, which has led to water losses exceeding 56 percent, far from the required target.
On April 10, in an Extraordinary General Assembly, the Lanzarote Water Consortium unanimously approved initiating the procedure to terminate the concession contract with Canal Gestión Lanzarote for water supply, sanitation, and reuse services on the islands of Lanzarote and La Graciosa, according to article 213.6 of the Public Sector Contract Law (LCSP).
### Claim Against the Channel and Regulations of the Investigative Committee
The Assembly members also approved the admission of Canal Gestión's appeal for reconsideration regarding the claim file for 1.5 million euros due to a water rate increase, approved in the previous Legislature.
"It is a procedural defect that we have already corrected, and the process continues so that Canal returns the one and a half million euros that the previous officials of the Cabildo paid for a rate increase that was rejected by the Canary Islands Prices Commission," according to Councilor Cejas. This point had the opposition vote of the Municipalities of Tías, San Bartolomé, and Haría, and the abstention of the mayor of Yaiza.
Unanimous approval was also given to the regulations governing the creation and operation of the Commission of Inquiry, approved in the previous Assembly of the Consortium, to determine the reasons for the disappearance of official documentation (minutes of the Assemblies) of the public company Inalsa during the previous term.
