Taken from an article on La Marina Plaza today
- Ecologists in Acció complains that the real reason that the fire has lasted for two months is that the company in charge of the plant is carrying out a massive accumulation of waste and charging the city council.
- They call for responsibility for an “environmental catastrophe” to be purged. ( See video above)
Ramblars landfill in Javea has been burning for more than 1,500 hours (last Friday marked two months since the start of the fire) but nobody seems to be too concerned: right now there is no one to monitor the evolution of the fire or control the perimeter.
Despite the fact that there is only a short distance from where the flames continue to glow there are “mountains” of vegetable remains and firewood piled up without burning that could aggravate the magnitude of the fire and reactivate it in the event that the fire reaches there.
This has been denounced by Ecologists in Acció, which this weekend has visited the landfill and was able to reach the fire without seeing anyone who was exercising any control. This organisation has warned that “at any moment a new mountain of waste could begin to burn” and that iron and plastic can also be seen among the waste that continually burns.
What the company does
For Ecologistes en Acció, there is an underlying problem: the company that manages the plant have an obligation not to accumulate waste for more than a month and to remove 1,200 tons of waste monthly. This was stated in the specifications that warned that failure to comply with both deadlines and that amount of removal would be considered a very serious offense and subject to a sanction. But in reality, that is what is failing: that the remains accumulate constantly and without control – and that is the reason why Ramblars has recorded two serious fires in recent years.
“In theory Ramblars was a transfer plant for vegetable waste, but in practice the management company is limited to piling up the waste and charging the town hall. If this massive accumulation did not take place, we would not have had two months of fire and an environmental catastrophe,”
What does the city council do in the face of this toxic cloud?
The conservationists are also very critical of the attitude of the city council, managed by the PSPV, in this whole matter: “It has not taken any measures to prevent past fires from recurring” and for that reason “the responsibilities of what that has already happened is theirs and they should put plans in place so that it does not happen again”.
“In the end, citizens have to pay taxes for this disastrous waste management and while the residents of Javea, Gata and Benitachell Poble Nou have been breathing clouds of smoke for months, since the winter weather conditions cause the smoke to cool quickly and stay near the surface.
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