Benidorm warns that the Ministry's refusal to expand El Campello landfill will trigger treatment costs for municipalities

The mayor of Benidorm Street Cleaning, José Ramón González de Zárate, has warned today that "the refusal of the Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development, Climate Emergency, and Ecological Transition to expand El Campello landfill, which is going to trigger the costs of the municipalities for waste treatment”. González de Zárate made this assessment given the statements made last week by Minister Isaura Navarro who, according to various media, ruled out authorizing the expansion of the dumping site requested by the management company in El Campello.

The councilor showed his "enormous concern and outrage" over this decision. First, "because an investment of almost 25 million euros has just been made to adapt the Consortium Plant to environmental regulations", with the consequent extension of the duration of the contract with the current concessionaire, "now we have to transport the rejections abroad, with the environmental problems that this can cause”.

In addition, this decision would have economic repercussions for the consortium municipalities "impossible to bear with their resources", since "according to the estimates provided by the municipal technicians, if finally, as is being considered, once  the landfill of the Consortium is clogged, the rests produced in El Campello are derived to Xixona landfill, the economic cost could be 4.5 million euros in the best of cases and up to 8 million euros in the worst scenario, between transport and the dumping fee of between 100,000 and 180,000 tons per year”. An amount, he added, that "could be increased if the alternative were to refer the rejections to Villena."

González de Zárate adds a third to both circumstances: that the Ministry has made this decision "behind the back of the 52 consortium councils" and, by extension, "the 400,000 users who will be the ones who will ultimately be affected by the increases in service costs".

This "new extra cost", underlines the councillor, is added "to the increase of close to 200% that the Consortium rate has suffered in the last four years" and that "in the case of Benidorm the City Council has assumed directly, so as not to affect the neighbors".

González de Zárate affirmed that "we attend as guests of stone to the non-existent management of the president of the Consortium and the permanent and intense interventionism of the Department" that "the same forces to improve the efficiency of the plant by making heavy investments, such as reducing it denying additional measures” such as the one requested by the concessionaire regarding the expansion of the 3-meter high landfill basin.

Likewise, he described as "irresponsible" the action of the minister, who "refuses to authorize the expansion of the vessel without having proposed a viable alternative negotiated with the affected municipalities." “Whoever has to solve the problem does not have to pay for it; and who is going to pay for it, who are the citizens of the Marina Alta, Marina Baixa, and El Campello, they are not allowed to participate in the solution ”, he has sentenced.