Public offensive against illegal wells

PalmThe Department of Water Resources and the Nature Protection Service (Seprona) of the Civil Guard carried out the first of a series of operations throughout the summer to pursue large consumers who extract significant amounts of water without authorization. As a result of the collaboration between the two agencies, last week an illegal well was closed at the Cap Menorca rural hotel, in the former military batteries of Llucalari (Alaior), where up to 40 tons of water were being extracted without permission per day.

Seprona suspects that the water was being used to irrigate gardens and also to refill the 500-square-meter swimming pool and a dozen smaller 15-meter pools at this rural tourist complex almost daily. The well, closed as part of the Civil Guard's Operation Zahorí, is 82 meters deep and was neither declared nor registered in the mandatory Water Resources registry.

The GOB also suspects that, in this case, "the volumes of pool water renewed each day are very high. The prices paid for a room in such an accommodation are high, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to think that the water in the small pools was being changed."

The environmental organization points out that the project, initially conceived for 150 places, had to be resized ten years later to only 30 beds. This is, it points out, the third tourist accommodation in the Alaior countryside to be sanctioned for something similar. The first was Torre Vella, which converted the seven cisterns listed in the project documents into seven swimming pools due to water savings. The second affected Sant Llorenç, an establishment where the GOB also detected the presence of nine swimming pools that were originally intended to be cisterns.

It so happens that the consulting firm that handled the environmental processing of the three projects on behalf of the developers, Abril, is the same one that the Menorca Council has now commissioned to carry out the rough modifications to the Island Territorial Plan (PTI), which, environmentalists and opposition groups warn, have been in recent decades.

In any case, the GOB publicly expresses its gratitude for the joint action of Water Resources and the Civil Guard and encourages public administrations to continue along this path and pursue large consumers. "We must end the feeling of total impunity that has been observed in water abuses," it emphasizes. This is even more so in the case of Menorca, which has gone from having water reserves at 71% in one year to only 42% at the beginning of this summer.

"Anyone who uses large quantities of water on a whim or for business should receive priority inspection," says the GOB, which points to other cases of alleged illegalities that require action: an unlicensed complex of 13 swimming pools in Ciutadella and a private grassy field with 20,000 residents. The Civil Guard and Water Resources have already taken note.