The tender for the new management contract for the Las Lomas plant, in the Valdemingómez Technology Park, reveals that the José Luis Martínez-Almeida City Council is studying extending its operation for another 15 years, until 2040. This is what emerges after The municipal government has submitted to public information the cost structure and price review formula of the future contract.
In the writing, according to Cadena SER advancesthe General Directorate of Valdemingómez foresees the execution of said contract for a period of 15 years. It is the “estimated time” for the recovery of investments that the concessionaire considers necessary to execute in order to meet the contractual objectives. The document includes structural costs that are close to 40 million euros (dedicated to personnel, supplies and fuel or maintenance of facilities).
“This is truly crazy,” the account for the Villa de Vallecas district of Más Madrid, the main opposition force in Cibeles, said on X (formerly Twitter). According to the party’s spokesman on the Urban Planning Commission, José Luis Nieto, “extending the life of the incinerator goes against common sense, the European directive, the Law on Waste and Contaminating Soils and the Waste Strategy of the Community of Madrid”.
Nieto believes that “at this point what should be talked about is the closure of Valdemingómez.” Remember that the incinerator “was operating for months without the corresponding integrated environmental authorization and without Almeida asking the company to account.” He adds that “Almeida did not ask the company to account, and when the permit was regularized, it increased waste incineration by 10,000 tons per year.”
The party led at the municipal level by Rita Maestre proposes that the new contract tendered be “for a maximum period of two non-extendable years, including the planned and ordered closure in 2027.” Nieto considers it “imperative” to eliminate incineration from the waste treatment process in this plant.”
For the Environment area, led by councilor Borja Carabante (Almeida’s right-hand man who also includes the powers of Urban Planning and Mobility in his delegated area), the municipal Executive is instead following its Waste Strategy on tiptoe. That is, deactivate the incinerator as soon as possible, once the objectives set by the European Union of reducing municipal waste disposal to 10% of the total have been achieved.
New neighborhood march to demand the end of the incinerator
Meanwhile, environmental organizations and residents of Valdecarros (a nearby integrated urban development in the Ensanche de Vallecas), continue their mobilization against the activity of the facility. The next demonstration will take place on Thursday, January 19, after the Working Group for the Closure of the Valdemingomes Incinerator (formed by Ecologists in Action, the Regional Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Madrid and the Action Group for the Environment.
The neighborhood protest against the dumping of ash and other effects on the environment, the seventh of its kind, will run from the Valdecarros Metro and to Valdemingómez. The route will surround the incinerator plot and cross the landfill.
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