Cleaning up Puerto Pollensa ... on it goes

At a recent council meeting, there was approval of a motion regarding the management of wastewater in Pollensa and Formentor. Junts say that this commitment proves that they had all along been right in promoting the implementation of a comprehensive sewage and rainwater plan, one designed - among other things - to definitively address the issue of spills at beaches in the bay.

Junts brought the idea for the plan before a council meeting in September. As they point out, this didn’t get the backing of the four parties which make up the administration, who all abstained. Evidence of problems was denied.

Since then, there has certainly been - at the very least - an implicit acceptance of problems, as there is the agreement with the Imedea Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies to study the impact of potential contamination as part of a process of applying for European funds to modernise the wastewater network.

It isn’t the case, in my view, that the administration has ever denied that there are problems. It’s just that, for whatever reason, it didn’t want to commit to the Junts proposal. Podemos have now also presented something similar. Junts say that the latest council meeting agreement shows that their proposal had been “justified and necessary”.

They go on to criticise the “inaction” of the Unió Mollera Pollencina delegate for Puerto Pollensa (and first deputy mayor), Andrés Nevado, as well as “the lack of political will of the entire administration team and the mayor himself in solving the problems.”

Highlighting the need for “the safest beaches possible in these pandemic and post-pandemic times”, Junts state that “the resumption and prosperity of economic activity in the municipality is directly linked to the quality of the coast and water”.