Last July, the Cabildo of Lanzarote presented the document "Definition of the conceptual model of groundwater in the hydrographic demarcation of Lanzarote." The truth is that the title already anticipates what the document will be: rambling, erroneous, repetitive, and deliberately obscure. Just think, wouldn't it have been much better to title it: "The Aquifers of Lanzarote," clearer, briefer, and more explicit? But perhaps these last three epithets were not what they were looking for with the document in question. Let's look at the reasons.
In May, the Podemos group supported the idea, backed by geophysics data, that in the badlands of La Corona and Timanfaya there is an aquifer that is likely to provide groundwater to the island. Hydrology can demonstrate that in the two badlands we have more quantity and better quality of groundwater than in the rest of the island, and that should make the Cabildo investigate that possibility and, if confirmed, as geophysics has already done, the Hydrological Plan should assume the existence of two aquifers, one in each badland, instead of a single aquifer extending to the entire island.
Well, no, that is not what the Cabildo has defined with the document in the epigraph. However, after forty years of persistent error, it finally recognizes that there is not a single aquifer in Lanzarote, but now it has come out with the idea that there are not one, but four. And what four! Starting with the names, it has called them: Mio-Pliocene of Famara, Miocene of Los Ajaches, Pleistocene and Holocene, and Quaternary Sedimentary. Of these four aquifers, the last two do not have names by which to locate them, why is that? The one with a compound name, Pleistocene and Holocene, is the aforementioned one of the badlands of Timanfaya and La Corona, but has it been on purpose or has it been wanting the name to be rambling and also misplaced?
Indeed, Pleistocene and Holocene are the two eras into which the Quaternary is divided, of which the Holocene is the current one, in which we are now and which covers tens of thousands of years of the past, therefore the two badlands with an age of 300 and 2000 years belong to the Holocene, so the aquifer does not need the Pleistocene part. As you can see, this last aquifer, the important one and we could even say the only one, is masked and poorly defined in the Cabildo's document that we are now commenting on, and that is because on page 52 of the document it says verbatim: "there would be the possibility of locating two large aquifers associated with the badlands of La Corona and Timanfaya, which are the only formations with sufficient permeability to form an aquifer".
The underlining is mine, but you will tell me that it is not worth it. At last they give us the reason and that until now they have been denying it to us. Now it turns out that they themselves say that they are the only ones that are aquifers, then... why put three more? And even more so if they themselves say that these are not aquifers. Analyzing the other three, it is deduced that, as we already knew, they did not deserve to be considered. You will see: the three that they have added, to understand each other, are the one of Famara, the one of Los Ajaches and the one of the ravines that have drags and sands. The last one is not considered even by themselves and of the first two they recognize in the document that the one of Famara has more permeability and with it more possibilities of having water. In fact, on page 52 they say of Famara that it is the largest reserve on the island and they are all with Emilio Custodio who since 1974 said that it had an exploitable aquifer.
We all know the reality, the four galleries barely give a trickle of water, even they themselves recognize it since in the cited document and on its page 55 they say of this aquifer that "the overexploitation of the aquifer was worsening the quality until it became brackish". Then if the best aquifer of the other three that the Cabildo says there are in Lanzarote is overexploited and on top of that the little water that it gives is of bad quality, why define them as masses of water susceptible of contributing water to the supply?
But the best was yet to come and it is when they have to put a technical excuse that justifies that the aquifers of Timanfaya and La Corona -sorry the aquifers of the Pleistocene and the Holocaust- should not even be considered, even having said repeatedly throughout the document that they are the ones that have greater permeability, porosity, infiltration and surface and that they are even the only ones to be considered (Page 52). But in order not to have to take it into account, they say -Page 80- that what happens is that even when the water infiltrates and gets inside the land of the badland, we do not know for what strange reason the water stays in the unsaturated zone, it does not continue to go down, defying the force of gravity, and without Newton knowing it, it stays there waiting for the "great evaporation of that stored water" to come and take it to the skies, preventing the water resources from being stored.
This is nothing more than an assumption from the subsoil to the skies and knowing its existence leads us to the terrible conclusion that La Geria, the cisterns and the ponds of this island have never worked; because if the assumption takes the water from under the badlands, what will it do when it is only covered by a small layer of picón or a poor and dilapidated roof full of holes. But even so, this is nothing compared to the wonderful explanation of the mass of water of Los Ajaches that neither exists nor is expected and if not, ask the three wells that are there.
In short, 285 excessive pages in which much is written without saying anything, it is affirmed denying and it is defined without specifying, so that everything remains as it is, which is how it should be. A word to the wise...
*Carlos Soler Liceras, Doctor Engineer of Roads, Canals and Ports
