Doubts over Playa Jardín reopening and Tenerife’s sewage pledge

Von Marlis Zoschke

It’s good to read that the sewage problem on Tenerife is now set to be resolved quickly. Then the beach will be open again soon, too. Surely this is just wishful thinking on the part of those in charge. They’re trying to reassure the public whilst downplaying the real problem. If things don’t go as quickly as promised, the construction company will surely be blamed.

A Dutch company has now been found to sort out the mess. The Dutch have a great deal of experience with water, and we can hope that they will manage to inspect the entire pipework system within the specified timeframe of 16 months.

It seems that from the very beginning, things weren’t taken all that seriously, as the discharge of untreated sewage into the sea is said to amount to 63 million litres a day – from Tenerife alone.

Tenerife: Many buildings still not connected to the sewerage system

Many buildings are not connected to the sewerage system at all, and in the mountains and small villages, everything is perhaps simply left to seep away. If the entire pipework system is inspected – which is certainly the best solution – 16 months will probably not be enough for this work. Moreover, it won’t be exactly cheap either.

When work began on turning many of Tenerife’s beaches – which did not even exist at the time – into a rocky wasteland, it seems that no one bothered to check the soil and terrain conditions to see whether proper drainage would be possible.

But the foreign investors must surely have made all sorts of grand promises, and the magic word was always: ‚money‘. In no time at all, those ugly concrete blocks were erected; they were well let at first, but only a short time later they were all standing empty again.

Will Tenerife learn from its mistakes?

With a little more common sense and less greed, Tenerife would surely still be the paradise that the locals once saw it as. And that’s no exaggeration.

Meanwhile, mass tourism is coming in for criticism in many holiday destinations. In Thailand, two islands are even being closed to tourists for a few months. Tenerife, on the other hand, seems to be making an effort to ensure there are enough hire cars available. Perhaps they’ll learn from their mistakes here one day, too.