The impossibility of purifying the water in the Valencian towns most affected by the DANA, which destroyed a hundred sewage treatment plants, and the “huge” amount of decomposing organic waste that has been accumulating in homes, establishments and streets for a week are currently the two main concerns of the Government in environmental matters. For the purification, and as an immediate measure, at the moment it plans to use portable purifiers of those used to assist other countries in international cooperation, while for the collection of waste a “double collection” directed by Tragsa has been enabled, in homes and in establishments such as fishmongers, butchers or greengrocers where the waste accumulates.
The Secretary of State for the Environment, Hugo Morán, has referred to these two special points of concern within his competences during an appearance before the Congress that has cancelled its ordinary agenda to focus only on the DANA and after spending two days in Valencia examining the state of the situation.
“The Generalitat computes more than 100 wastewater treatment facilities of all sizes affected. There are purification stations literally buried by one, two or three meters of mud, absolutely unusable,” said Morán, together with the fact that the collectors in the streets are still flooded and can not even make an assessment of the damage, has pointed to the need to use “alternative systems” to avoid “health problems”.
“As there are no purification and sanitation systems and we have no collectors, discharges are occurring without any kind of treatment and it leads us to have to enable punctual solutions to prevent it from becoming a sanitary problem in the short term,” he has said.
In relation to waste collection and based on what has been transferred by operators in Valencia, he added that “in the immediate, the difficulties are because there are many areas where you can pass all perishable products in decomposition that generate a serious health problem.”
(more information coming soon)