Water should be a universal right, because it is an essential asset for life. Currently, droughts, famines, wars and migratory movements, caused by the effects of climate change, are already being suffered by millions of people, animals and plants, with water becoming the object of desire for multinationals that traffic and trade with it.
In the Canary Islands, in addition, water is a scarce commodity. Scarce and private.
Two necessary conditions for water to be the object of business and speculation.
One might wonder about the role played, in the entire water cycle, by the island water councils, which are in the hands of each of the councils.
We have to bet on the application of circular economy criteria to the water cycle: efficiency and sustainability throughout the process, desalinate less and not allow us to have losses close to 70% in the transport of water, purify with natural procedures, which do not consume energy, and reuse all the water.
The water-renewable energy binomial should be indissoluble. However, in the Canary Islands, bets are made on programmed obsolescence, on large works and large businesses.
Water, piche and brick intermingle their economic interests in the islands. And they have the political support of Coalición Canaria and their unconditional PP and ASG, to continue enriching themselves and scamming the Canarians.
Charging for purifying and not doing it is a scam.
It is a scam to sell us drinking water and continue to allow population centers on various islands to not be able to use the water from their taps due to the excess of fluoride, nitrate or boron, which do not meet the water quality criteria, according to the Ministry of Health.
For more than three decades, the successive political leaders of the Canary Islands, the majority of Coalición Canaria, have repeatedly failed to comply with Canarian, Spanish and European regulations regarding wastewater discharges into the sea.
And, consequently, we have received repeated fines from the European Union for illegal discharges, which are the responsibility of the municipalities; millionaire fines for not having carried out the hydrological plans of the islands, competences of the Cabildos.
And, above them, the Government of the Canary Islands.
According to the census, we are throwing water into the sea through 394 pipes, 49 of them are submarine emissaries. The number of unauthorized discharge points is 277 (72%), distributed 50% in both provinces. And 69 of them discharge into areas classified as beaches, that is, where we bathe.
Islands like El Hierro (5) have no authorized point. La Gomera, of 10 only has 3, the same as La Palma of 17; Lanzarote, of 37 only 8 authorized; Fuerteventura of 40 only 10 authorized; Gran Canaria of 113 only 33 authorized and Tenerife of 172 only 59 authorized.
The panorama is bleak. City councils, Cabildos and the Government of the Canary Islands deciding that this issue is not a priority because it does not give votes. It's just filth. What does it matter?
The entry into the European Union brought with it a lot of money to the Canary Islands, European funds that should have been invested in water purification, improvements in channeling, submarine emissaries, sewerage? and we have found a Government and local institutions that have preferred to spend the money from Europe on viewpoints, pharaonic works, roundabouts, Insular rings, more roads and deserted ports.
The construction business as an end in itself, which, in addition, always benefits a few, who are the ones who decide on politics in the Canary Islands.
Urban wastewater accounts for 57% of discharges into the sea and does so through 224 registered discharge points, out of a total of 394 pipes that end up in the sea. Of these, only 18% is purified and regenerated.
This situation has a solution, there are alternative solutions and citizens are already discussing it on different islands, forming citizen platforms such as Isla Baja in Tenerife, or collecting signatures on change.org as they have been doing in Gáldar with the Bocabarranco area.
Faced with methods based on high maintenance costs using fossil fuels, there are other methods that could reduce the flow of wastewater with primary and secondary purification processes in higher areas, purification with anaerobic biodigesters and a final phase of purification with plants.
These systems have multiple advantages such as their zero energy cost, low implementation costs, high operating autonomy, absence of bad odors, and the possibility of reusing the products generated (aquatic plant for forage or ornamental, sludge for fertilizer, outlet water as liquid fertilizer for crop irrigation, biomass generated in the process as fuel).
We have several experts in the Canary Islands who, with their own technology, have demonstrated that it is possible.
Surely, those responsible politicians have not thought about it or bet on it, because they are not large infrastructures, they do not consume electrical energy, they do not depend, therefore, on oil or gas with high consumption bills, and, of course, they are not a business in themselves.
They have opted for desalination plants on all the islands, which consume a lot of energy and produce highly salinized brines and sludge for which the optimal solution has not been found.
We have to bet on natural purification and because our seas and our territory are not contaminated and all wastewater is reused.
By Manuel Marrero Morales, Deputy of the Podemos Canarias Parliamentary Group
