The news of the possibility of an aquifer in the subsoil of the Timanfaya lava flows has had a great impact in the media and as a consequence opinions of all tastes and colors have been formulated. Among them, the most common is that, without going into defining whether or not there is water under the enormously permeable lava flows of the badlands, some of these comments say that it is an issue in which it is not worth spending a euro and more with the urgent things that need to be done in this archipelago.
I totally agree with the second part of the comment, politicians should invest in the priority issues of the islands and of course there are many and very urgent ones. But it turns out that finding good quality groundwater in Lanzarote is ensuring the survival of the island, or if you prefer, the water sustainability of the population, because to this day all the water consumed comes from desalination and these waters are obtained using a lot of energy whose production is done with petroleum products that the island lacks. In the event of a cut in the supply of oil, the island would first run out of energy and then food, but due to this water-oil dependence it would also run out of water. And I ask those who believe that obtaining groundwater is not a priority: how long would the population last without energy, how long without food and... how long without water? Is it then a priority or not to find out if there is water under the Timanfaya lava flows?
You don't have to be a catastrophist to be concerned about the dependence that is being generated in these islands between water and oil. It is no longer a question of whether the reason for the shortage was a war, which is also worrying, especially knowing that we are the first generation of Spaniards who have not known one. But in order for us to run out of oil in the Canary Islands, it is not necessary for the war to be in Spain, or even for there to be a war, it is enough for a situation or dispute to occur that affects Spain and more specifically the supply of oil that we totally lack and that thanks to the "skill" of our local politicians in taking advantage of resources, energy is extracted 95% from the greasy and black liquid that we totally lack.
On the other hand, Canarians use a lot of water, they have done so from the first moment, back in the 16th century when they began to develop their economy based on three "crops": first sugar cane, then bananas and now tourists. And this is curiously in a region with little water, here it only rains half of what falls in the rest of Spain and this is one of the most arid countries in Europe. For that reason and because in some islands, including of course Lanzarote, in times gone by but that no one can swear will not return, there have been real water shortages, so many and so strong that they have generated diasporas in search of survival in other places. But those who stayed, those who stoically endured the vicissitudes of the droughts and managed to survive, did so thanks to the fact that they developed a true science of how to find water where there is almost none.
Necessity sharpened ingenuity and therefore the Canarian from all the islands learned, as no one has done in this world and I am not exaggerating at all, how to capture the water that fleetingly and erratically runs through the ravines before it is irretrievably lost in the sea. This is how the great hydraulic inventions were born of which this archipelago is a true school: the gavias, the maretas, the nateros, the aljibes, the eres, the guácimos and the almogarenes. But the Canarian also looked for it underground with wells and galleries.
Again, it must be pointed out that no one in this world has been able to drill so many wells three meters in diameter that have exceeded six hundred meters in depth or so many galleries that have reached more than six kilometers in length. It was by building these impressive hydraulic works that provide 80% of the water to the archipelago, when the Canarian became a hydrogeologist, transforming these islands into a laboratory where with a density of one catchment per square kilometer, allows you to see the interior of the islands and find out the process of their formation or visit the aquifer, touring it and even bathing or diving in it. What a pity that this immense work, carried out by little more than one or two generations, has not been worthy of the gratitude of the Canarians! What ingratitude ours towards those who gave everything so that the Canary Islands would have water and also in a sustainable way!
The payment they have received is the oblivion of the supplied and the contempt of the technicians. The latter is not an exaggeration, suffice it to say that only the undersigned, of all the technicians of the Canarian administration, has continued to look for water underground, the others have completely opted for desalination, but the contempt has gone further, the administration has barely granted subsidies with which to maintain that hydraulic infrastructure. Everything for and for desalination, thus forgetting an exclusively Canarian university, unique in the world, which languishes between oblivion and contempt, betting in this way on the water unsustainability of the archipelago and generating with desalination a double contamination: by the consumption of oil to generate the energy necessary to desalinate and by pouring those huge jets of brine on a coastline already devastated by the numerous and uncontrolled discharges of purified water.
I know that many readers when reading these lines will think of the water lords and water grabbers, associated in past decades with water speculation. They existed, it is human nature and its pettiness that caused them; but it is also true that for each one of them there were thousands of small shareholders who, handing over their savings, gambled everything on one card, waiting for the longed-for trickle of water to have an orchard and thus get married and start a family. These last ones were the most, the true architects of the miracle of water in this archipelago where surviving the droughts impelled them to be the best hydraulic engineers that this world saw since the Romans disappeared.
Finally, and anticipating what they may think, I can say with total sincerity that neither I nor my family have ever had water shares. It is not my money that moves me to write, it is the ignorance of some and the ingratitude of others that drives me.
*Carlos Soler Liceras, PhD in Civil Engineering, Channels and Ports, with a specialty in Hydraulics and Energy
