San Miguel de Salinas will not have a waste treatment plant as the Waste Management Service of the Generalitat Valenciana has finally rejected the macro-plant project presented by the OHL group in which they planned to treat up to 100,000 tons of waste from across the region on land within the municipality.
However, before the San Miguel residents could raise a glass of champagne in celebration, Monday afternoon’s meeting of the Diputación del Congacio Vega Baja Sostenible gave their approval for Dolores to host a temporary facility for the transfer of waste from the region.
The General Director of Environmental Quality of the Generalitat, Joan Piquer, announced details of his report during the meeting of the Waste Consortium of Vega Baja.
Answering questions from the mayor of Redován, Emilio Fernández, Piquer pointed out, that the report rejected the submission “for technical reasons.”
Now the report must go through the Technical Committee of the Vega Baja Sustainable Consortium which, we understand has already indicated that they will not continue with it, dismissing the project of the OHL plant in San Miguel de Salinas.
San Miguel’s Councillor for the Environment, Maria Jose Costa, said that she was delighted that the plan has now finally been rejected.
However it is a different story in Dolores where a transfer plant announced more than a year ago will now be built. The project, led by the city council, now has a green light following its approval by the Consortium, which agreed the purchase of 6,600 square meters of land on a municipal industrial estate.
The public company Vaersa, who will operate the plant, will now go ahead with its construction on the procured site. As such, the 1.6 million euros of subsidy will not be lost from the Generalitat Valenciana to the Consortium (800,000 euros in this year’s budget and another 800,000 in 2019) which will be used for the implementation of works and the acquisition of equipment for the eco-park.
This is, however, a temporary installation since the region still has no landfill and other facilities to dispose of the thousands of tons of waste generated by its 27 municipalities, which now have to move their waste to Xixona, and, in the case of Orihuela, also to Cañada Hermosa (Murcia).
The intention of the Waste Consortium is to establish two definitive treatment plants and another for the management of garden waste and biomass, plants or plant-based materials.
The Vega Baja Sustainable Consortium also approved a mobile eco – park network in the municipalities of the Vega Baja.
The Dolores transfer plant is a temporary solution to the problem of waste disposal in the Vega Baja, which has been involved in corruption scandals for years and is the epicenter of the ongoing Brugal case involving former Orihuela mayor Monica Lorente and with the controversial businessman, Ángel Fenoll, as the alleged ringleader.
