The Entrerríos landfill in Mijas has still not been sealed fourteen years after its closure

"We are going to start with the sealing of the landfill. It's about time, some might say," said Mijas councillor for economy and finance Mario Bravo at the last full council meeting. It was during this meeting that the town hall approved an injection of 15 million euros to this year's budget, which includes 500,000 euros for the old Entrerríos landfill. This site was closed in 2011, when the municipality began to divert its solid waste to a transfer plant located in the town itself and from there to Casares.

Long before its closure, the landfill, which was set up in the 1990s, was the subject of controversy, always questioned because of the possible pollution it was causing to the municipality's natural environment.

Five years would pass before the council announced a project for its sealing. It was in 2016 when the budget and timeframe for this intervention was announced, given that there was a budget to do so. But it was never done and today, fourteen years after the landfill was closed, it has still not been sealed.

Despite the words of the current finance councillor, there is still no concrete date for this problem to be solved.

The municipal government said that the 500,000 euros of the items included in the budget for this year is to "comply with a court ruling on the execution of works that were done more than 20 years ago by the former landfill manager". No further details were given on this point, either about the work in question or the court ruling.

The council said that the sealing work announced in 2016 was not carried out and the project is now obsolete "as it is not in line with current market prices". “We must resolve issues relating to the availability of the land, which apparently is not in the hands of the town hall,” it added. This prevents any tender from being carried out, but the council said it is working to resolve this availability.

So, for the moment, the sealing is impossible until the project is updated and the council has the land. It should be remembered that when the project was announced in 2016, the then councillor for infrastructures and the environment, José Carlos Martín (CS) considered the work to be "essential for our environment". He claimed that the leachate that is produced (liquid resulting from a process of percolation of a fluid through a solid) causes serious damage to the Mijas ecosystem over the years.