The project for the installation of a biogas production plant in the municipality of Colmenar Viejo, is raising many misgivings between the population of the town itself and that of the neighbor Three songs, both in the Community of Madrid.
More than misgivings, there is a neighborhood rejection that manifests itself through multiple informative and denunciation actions carried out by neighborhood associations and environmental organizations of both localities. In these days, the matter is in full boiling, as the full test to the flag of the informative act held last Monday convened by the Association of Neighbors of Tres Cantos. In addition, the Tricantinos were encouraged to attend the Plenary Session of the City Council planned for yesterday and ask questions about the project to all the political groups represented in the corporation, chaired by the PP.
The project
The project, called Smart Farm Biogas and promoted by ENAGAS, Prezero and ACES (Agbar Group) provides for the construction and operation of a 53 GW production plant from Biogas from the treatment of 75,000 tons per year of organic waste. Once the purified and conditioned for the production of Biomethane has been carried out, this will be channeled through an Enagás gas pipeline. Prezero is the company that operates, among others, the Valdemingómez plant, Madrid, one of the largest in Europe for size and production.
The planned investment is 21.5 million euros, of which a part, 3.3 million, come from the Next Generation funds of the European Union.
The location of the factory is in the municipality of Colmenar Viejo, in an area adjacent to that of three songs. Between them they are a population of almost 100,000 inhabitants.
Neighborhood opposition
The site and the dimensions of the project, the associated risks, the objectives in terms of the volume of waste that would feed the plant, the possible environmental conditions and the traffic of predictable trucks, among others, are the aspects that have raised the opposition of the social groups of both localities. To those who unite the lack of information.
The North Air Air Platform, Stop Biogás 3CV, PEN 3C and the neighborhood associations of both locations, follow the process, expose criticism of the project and act together.
Santiago Abad, a member of the Clean North Air Platform, which has studied the available documentation, states that “in the first place, a simplified, non -ordinary impact evaluation has been made. What attracts attention, both because of the characteristics and dimension of the industrial installation and for their location, which have very important impacts for the next population. It is a very light processing in the no allegations for citizens because, even, it has had no public exposure ».
The planned site is less than two kilometers from two Colmenar Institutes «and from the reference specialties center in the La Paz hospital area. In the case of three songs, it is less than three kilometers from the newest neighborhoods. The proximity to people is the most serious and what invalidates it ».
It also highlights another circumstance: «Colmenar and three songs together we do not generate even half of the waste to meet the objective of treating 70,000 tons a year, where will they come from? And, by pure arithmetic, it will generate a traffic of 18 daily trucks of 40 tons, with its corresponding emissions, on a M-607 road that is already saturated ». Therefore, it is “a megaplanta; which foresees a second phase that increases up to 150,000 tons of waste to be treated ».
For Abad, who emphasizes that «we understand that a technology that eliminates waste to produce gas and whose residue can be a good fertilizer, is valid and very interesting if it is dimensioning places properly. But, the correct location of this type of plants is where it has gained stagnant, food factories and the type of waste that feed it ». So, in this specific case, “you cannot talk about circular economy.”
Although according to Abad, “citizenship has no instance to resort, we have to mobilize and protest to act the municipalities and promoter companies think about it, because they will have enough citizen opposition.”
At least, in the case of three songs, its mayor Jesús Moreno, has declared that he intends to ask the promoters to study a relocation for the industrial plant.