The company Glefaran de Balmaseda constantly exceeds the pollution limits established
- Between 2016 and 2023, Glefaran used Pastguren’s former paper mill as an incinerator to produce electricity. Over these seven years, the emission limits for ash particles were skipped and "endangered human health and the environment". Several officials of the Basque Government and a head of the company have been charged for two environmental crimes in Gipuzkoa.
The company Glefaran has continuously breached the limits established to regulate the dumping of ash particles, according to a report by the Environmental Prosecutor’s Office in Bizkaia. The company had a biomass plant in Balmaseda (Bizkaia), which was in operation between 2016 and 2023. The emissions of this incinerator have warned that it affected the population of Güeñes (Bizkaia) and Zalla (Bizkaia) and, according to the report, "put human health and the environment at risk".
The company Glefaran (Global Efficiency Aranguren) produced electricity by burning forest raw materials. The neighborhoods of Aranguren and Arangoiti are located near the site of the Encartación plant, and about 15,000 people live there.
In Aranguren there was a paper factory that was built taking advantage of the infrastructure of the municipality's cogeneration plant in 2016. The group Ecologists in Action denounced in 2020 that the landfill of the incinerator was dangerous due to the "great particle runoff" it suffered. She said the incinerator used to release "dust clouds" often, along with soot and ash.
Reports without rigour
Several reports on incinerator emissions and associated health damage have been produced in recent years: The Environmental Department of the Basque Government in 2017 and 2019, the Department of Health in 2018 and the municipalities of Güeñes and Zalla in 2019. However, Ekologistak Martxan has denounced that these reports have no "rigour" and are "scarce in terms of methodology and transparency". Thus, these writings do not give the ability, among other things, to identify the damage to the health of the pollutants that the incinerator of Glefaran has dumped.
It has been four years since neighbours and environmental groups in the area denounced the high levels of pollution of the villages of Güeñes and Zalla. The Balmaseda incinerator, which was closed in 2023, has since been known about the damage caused. The Environmental Prosecutor’s Office in Bizkaia has concluded that there could be environmental offences related to the activity of the incinerator, and has charged four former charges of the Basque Government and one administrator of Glefaran.
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