In 2020 in the province of Granada, only 60 of the 114 municipalities had a sewage-treatment plant; in other words, the rest dumped their sewage into the nearest barranco or river.
That year the Junta de Andalucía proposed the building of EDARs (sewage-treatment plants) in all of those municipalities, both big ones and small ones, depending on the size of a municipality’s population. Their main objective was to start with the metropolitan area to stop sewage going into rivers.
According to the Junta’s Agricultural Department, 93-million euros have been put into this. To solve this area’s problems, it was not only a case of building new ones, but enlarging existing ones, too, such as Los Vados and increase the existing pipelines that bring sewage into the plant for treatment.
They started with Maracena, Albolote, Jun and Pulianas last year; some 60,000 inhabitants in total whose waste would be handled by one macro-sewage-treatment plant.
Nobody is in any doubt that this is a laborious and time-consuming target but it is hoped that these 30 municipalities without a sewage plant will be included in a network of new installations by the end of 2026.
There are some metropolitan municipalities such as Cenes De la Vega, Pinos Genil, Huétor Vega and most of Armilla that already have such installations.
As for the Alpujarra, several villages will all be connected to a new plant (Polopos-La Mamola, Rubite and Sorvilán) which has a budget of 5.7m euros and provides sewage disposal for a combination of 10,500 inhabitants. The Junta says that this work will commence “shortly.” The EDARs for Soportújar, Torvizcón and Válor are “near completion,” says the department.
On the coast, apart from projects to use recycled water from the plants in La Herradura and Almuñécar, there are no planes for new sewage plants. According to the Head of the Agricultural Department, Carchuna-Calahonda have a treatment plant that is “working correctly,” despite the beach closures over human waste in the sea.
Finally, the Junta has plans to build an EDAR at the Sierra Nevada Ski resort. This area of the municipality of Monachil (the ski resort lies within it) has a sewage-treatment plant but it is not working correctly and the Junta says that they will be working on it.
Editorial note: the EU continues to fine Spain a huge amount each year for not having enough EDARs and the amount already paid in fines would have built several missing EDARs
(News: Province of Granada)
Keywords: Junta, Sewage-Treatment Plants, EDAR, Metropolitan Area, Alpujarra, Coast, Pradollano Ski Resort
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