The mayor of Yaiza, Óscar Noda, met with the delegate of Redeia, Red Eléctrica's parent company in the Canary Islands, Ainara Irigoyen, to review the current status of the modification of the project to bury a new 132 kilovolt transport line over seven kilometers, located between Las Casitas and Femés, in the southern municipality.
Óscar Noda is confident that the current government group of the Cabildo of Lanzarote will maintain the commitment to finance the burial of the line in question, which amounts to 18 million euros, a budget that could be assumed equally by the Cabildo and the Government of the Canary Islands, although the Budgets of the Autonomous Community 2024 do not include any item for this project, unless the file is later corrected via amendments in the parliamentary process.
Meanwhile, Yaiza and Red Eléctrica agreed to collaborate to locate one by one the owners of the land affected by the passage of the underground line in order to sign agreements that allow the execution of the project. There is no room here for the declaration of public interest and the only way out is the signing of agreements.
From previous experiences, the most difficult thing is not to sign these agreements, but to locate the owners because they either live outside the Island or the country or because they have died, although a large part of the route will run parallel to roads of public ownership, as is the case of the road that connects Femés and Playa Blanca and the one that connects Las Casitas and Femés. A technically more complex, but salvageable, section is the slope of the pass, known as the ascent to Femés.
The trench planned to bury the line has a width of 1.4 meters with 0.70 of safety margin on both sides, so undertaking it is not a complicated intervention.
The mayor of Yaiza appreciates the willingness to dialogue and exchange information by Red Eléctrica. Yaiza invited the vice president of the Cabildo and Councilor for Public Works, Jacobo Medina, to the meeting, although he sent an email warning that he could not attend due to agenda problems. In the first part of the meeting, the head of the Technical Office of the First Island Corporation was present.