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Chus Heredia
Tuesday, 13 August 2024, 14:32
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The first ever plans for the Malaga Norte wastewater treatment plant date back 18 years. Andalucía's regional government (Junta) has tried to speed up the process to get this important facility up and running. The contract for the project had already been granted, but it has suffered various setbacks due to some head-on opposition, among other environmental and neighbouring protest groups, coming from the landowners in Vega de Mestanza, a citrus fruit-growing area between Alhaurín de la Torre and Malaga city. They have even taken legal action, but have recently been received on two occasions for talks with Junta president Juanma Moreno and regional minister of agriculture Ramón Fernández Pacheco, who are both determined to put an end to this saga.
The ministry's office points to the lack of action at the municipal level over many years, leading the Junta to take up the reins to resolve any actions pending at the time. Now, all those missed deadlines and non-compliance have turned into fines. Since 2018 the Junta has had to pay up to 7.5 million euros in penalties (at a rate of 630,000 euros half-yearly in round terms).
Fortunately, other earlier fines have been avoided thanks to some of the infrastructure actually being built. The first infringement that incurred in the province pinpointed four areas where wastewater was being dumped (Coín, Nerja, Estepona - now fixed - and Alhaurín el Grande). Those cases clocked up fines of more than 12.3 million euros. As such this long history of fines exceeds 20 million euros.
The amount in fines will increase until the part relating to Alhaurín el Grande's treatment plant is in operation. Turning to Cártama, it too has an ongoing dossier of violations that could result in more sanctions and more public money being spent to cover them, according to the regional ministry.
The Norte plant will treat wastewater from Alhaurín de la Torre, Alhaurín el Grande, Cártama and the new areas of development around Malaga city. This future facility should not be confused with the large Guadalhorce treatment plant in the city, which also treats wastewater from Torremolinos. Nor should it be mistaken for the Bajo Guadalhorce treatment plant, already in operation, which treats sewage from Coín and Pizarra. The first - Guadalhorce - is managed by Emasa (the municipal water company for Malaga) and invoices third parties for the service provided. The second is managed by the provincial water consortium of the Diputación (provincial authority for Malaga). In theory, the future Norte plant will also be managed by Emasa. Exactly what the legal set-up will look like remains to be seen, given that this Malaga-based public company already has a lot of responsibility for, and experience in, everything to do with supplying water to the growing metropolitan area that is Malaga (supply, purification, recycled water, desalination...).
So, where do these penalties come from? Directive 91/271/EEC lays down the necessary measures to be taken by EU member states to ensure that urban wastewater is adequately treated before being discharged into other water sources and sets maximum deadlines for the implementation and enforcement of such treatments.
In 2010, the Junta agreed to provide technical and financial assistance to local councils and the like, declaring such essential projects to be of general interest to the people of Andalucía.
Since 2015 the aforementioned Directive 91/271 and Directive 2000/60 (the latter provides a framework for the protection of a member state's waters from such as pollution) have not been complied with in these localities.
"Since the change of government in the Junta de Andalucía in 2019, water policies have been a priority in Andalucía. One of the main objectives of the [regional] government, which was considered in the Andalusian pact for water signed in 2020, has been to speed up all actions related to sanitation and purification that have been pending since 2010, in spite of the Junta charging users a fee for these infrastructure improvements," said ministry sources.
Among these pending actions was the project to build the Norte plant and associated collection and discharge points. The basic project was contracted by the Junta in 2006. In that year work also began on the sewer network needed to transport the wastewater from the municipalities to the treatment plant.
Completion of this project would achieve two objectives: compliance with environmental objectives and an increase in the resources available in the Guadalhorce valley through the reuse of treated wastewater. The importance of this alternative resource goes without saying. Recently the Axarquía area, for example, has begun to receive reclaimed water for irrigation use from the Peñón del Cuervo plant in Malaga. Also a project is under way to extend tertiary treatment at the Guadalhorce plant to provide 15 hm3 per year of recycled water for agriculture and golf.
Regarding the controversy raised by the location of the Norte plant in Vega de Mestanza, sources suggest that the location of the treatment plant has never been modified since 2006. It is the alternative that was considered in the POTAUM (the overall planning and urban development management tool used for Malaga city and surrounding metropolitan areas), approved by the Junta de Andalucía in 2009, and then approved by Malaga city council in 2011 as part of its PGOU (the city plan): "This construction project has been approved by the planning experts in the Junta and has received a favourable report from the planning department (Urbanismo) for Malaga city. In addition, it also has environmental authorisation from all concerned and all the necessary permits to start the work."
During the consultation process to secure a fully agreed environmental authorisation, the treatment plant and its associated installations (pumping stations, waste-collection points, electricity...) have been subjected to two new public information processes. "All the technical experts who have participated in this long process concluded that Vega Mestanza is the best solution," said the ministry.
The future Malaga Norte plant, an Aquambiente-Dinotec-Sando joint venture costing 104 million euros including VAT, was awarded the contract in 2021 with a completion period of 36 months. The idea is to carry out the work in phases using multiple teams of workers in order to dispense sooner with the unauthorised discharges of untreated sewage that cost so much in fines.
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