Inma Lidón Valencia
Valencia
Updated Tuesday, February 6, 2024-00:04
The
Sagunto
desalination plant has become the solution that the Government is betting on to
alleviate the drought in Catalonia
this coming summer. Daily tankers will carry the water treated at this facility in an example of water solidarity and national resource management. However, the public company
Acuamed
has considered this infrastructure as local and has an open procedure in the Contentious-Administrative Court number 3 of Valencia against the City Council to collect a bill that reaches almost 10 million euros for amortization, maintenance and operation. from the desalination plant.
For the construction of the plant, which ended in October 2013, the council signed an agreement with Acuamed by which it assumed a good part of the
cost of an infrastructure
that was going to cost around 20 million - but reached 45 - if the resources that it generated were destined for the business and demographic development of the municipality. That is, if the council became its main client, something that has not occurred in the opinion of the municipal government.
Since these conditions did not exist, in 2020 the City Council wanted to reformulate the agreement and have the Ministry assume the cost and maintenance. In a motion approved by the municipal plenary session, it demanded that the volumes of water that had been established as a reserve for Sagunto and its area of influence be "excluded until the associated costs were passed on jointly by the set of exploitation systems of the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation or in the entire national hydrological system".
That is to say, the City Council has always considered the desalination plant as an infrastructure that is part of
"the national water strategy"
, as the Ministry has now recognized through facts.
However, the judicial conflict continues, as do the settlements that Acuamed has been issuing quarterly since April 2019 and which already reach 10 million euros. In the first instance, the City Council obtained a favorable resolution, but the public company appealed.
Supplier of the Volkswagen gigafactory
Until now, the desalination plant has had an activity well below its capacity, which is 8 cubic hectometers. It has a main client, an industrial gases company, to which it allocates 2% of production, something that will begin to change in 2025.
The plant will be key in supplying the industrial hub that will be generated in Parc Sagunt around the
Volkswagen gigafactory
. It is planned that in 2025 half of its production will be for it, while it is expected that in 2035 it will use all the water it is capable of treating.
With this transfer of water from Sagunto to Catalonia, the Ministry has only committed to paying the price per cubic meter, while the Government will be responsible for the cost of the transfer. However, there is no reference to the payments required from Sagunto.