The environment minister, Robert Bouvierwill be questioned this Thursday at the Parliament for him Arazati Project; the questioning deputy will be Felipe Carballo, while Town meeting He has not yet made a decision and assured that they will wait for the interpellation for a resolution regarding whether they will support the hierarch or not.
This Tuesday, the environment minister will be questioned in Parliament by the Frente Amplio deputy, Felipe Carballo. “We are going to the Parliament with the aim of clarifying the doubts that the legislators and the questioning member have in a process of a work that will be a milestone,” said Bouvier.
With an open door for the motion of no confidence, Town meeting He has not yet expressed his inclination regarding the Arazatí project of the Government since they question that it is not the best investment for the Uruguay leave the infrastructure in the hands of private companies.
A million dollar investment
Depending on the specifications, the project will involve a investment of 253 million dollars, although the final cost will be known once the offers are known. Of this total, OSE will pay 52.7 million dollars annually for the availability of the infrastructure; which means that, at the end of the planned 20-year contract, the company will have paid 950 million dollars —As voted in the body’s budget.
In this sense, as established by Edgardo Ortuño, director for the Broad Front in OSE, the state company will be “defunded” for the payments that it will have to face for the initiative to build a new water treatment plant in San José, the well-known Arazatí Project —or Neptune-, as well as for the sanitation works; because this series of important expenses “will seriously compromise its future” and “will make it impossible” to carry out other necessary works in the departments of the interior of the country and the metropolitan area. A questioning that takes on even greater dimension in the context of the water crisis that is just beginning to be overcome in the country.
According to the director of the Frente Amplio in OSE, at the end of the 5 years of management, keeping the rate without increases and considering an annual investment of 70 million dollars —the ceiling established by the current administration— the execution of both private initiatives will mean a “deficit and therefore a need for funds of around 1,700 million dollars”.
What about salinity?
For her part, the mayor of Montevideo, Carolina Cosse, questioned at a press conference last week – after the consortium was awarded Montevideo waters the project – the utility thereof. “I’m not convinced it’s useful because the salinity tests that were done at the Silver river at the height of where the shot is going to be, they went wrong”.
In her criticism, the mayor of Montevideo He pointed out that “since it is not a desalination plant, but a water treatment plant, what they themselves propose is to build a kind of freshwater reservoir, but there is a lack of data for that.”
Along these lines, he asked himself: “How many days of salt water can scientifically be expected to exist? What continuity is there between those days to know what should be the dimension of that reservoir? “These are details of the project that I think need to be fine-tuned. It is one more symptom of the lack of direction, “she defined.
Environmental impacts
A report prepared by the consulting firm CSI Ingenieros and which was presented by SBI before him Ministry of Environment anticipated that it can cause 93 types of environmental impacts in the area, of which 27 present a “significant negative potential.”
The survey slipped that “they need a specific evaluation“and, among the main questions, he pointed out that the creation of the artificial lagoon contemplated in the initiative would modify “superficial runoff and the hydraulic regime of watercourses”, which would trigger “erosion” of soil and the potential “pollution” groundwater, among other problems.
Source: Ambito
