- The landfill installed an unauthorized pipe to drain the water and agents report that Zubieta is a source of water contamination. The prosecution calls for an investigation into whether the auditor has made prevarication. He raised the Zaldibar inspection records.
The Prosecutor’s Office in Gipuzkoa calls for an investigation into whether an official who has inspected the Zubieta incinerator has made a prevarication. According to previous studies, landfill inspections “have ignored” a “visible” pipe placed without authorization to evacuate the water from the landfill. This drainage tube was attached to the gas evacuation system after incineration, at the point where humidity problems occurred.
Behind the prosecutor's decree is an investigation carried out by the AnclSOS association. In addition to explaining the illegal practices of the incinerator, he has determined who has agreed that the incinerator should do so. The inspections included the Basque Government's Vice-Office for the Environment, the Ekondakin incinerator's concessionaire and the operating company Ekobal. One of these visits was also attended by a representative of the URA Agency and one of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa.
In all of them he was the same supervising person, as the parental platform has clarified: Hipolito Bilbao Intxaurraga, Technical Officer of the Environmental Department of the Government’s Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control Committee (IPPC) Vasco.Segun explained AnclSOS, the inspection records of the Zaldibar landfill were also prepared by Bilbao before the disaster.
As part of the transmission of AnclSOS’s investigation to the Prosecutor’s Office in Gipuzkoa, the decree providing evidence of crime to the inspection is completed. In particular, it refers to environmental prevarication, and the Penal Code provides that it may involve a prison term of six months to three years. In addition, you can disable the official and impose fines.
The question that is expected to be brought to court has its background this past summer. The Anti-Incinerator Movement denounced the dumping of toxic substances in the waters of Arkaitzerreka in Zubieta. They produced a report and concluded that it could originate from the incinerator. The newspaper Berria published in September an alleged information for the investigation, as it reported on the clandestine drainage system of Zubieta. Through the documentation and images provided by an operator who worked in the incinerator, he indicated that in 2019 the water evacuation tube was installed, although the certainty that it is still in it has not been clarified. This information has been used by the AnclSOS association to deepen the research.