On Wednesday, Subai Erakuntza presented a report on the management of household waste in Navarra at the Katakrak library in Pamplona/Iruña, and concluded that the management he is carrying out is not the right one. It denounced, above all, that this management is being carried out through macro-infrastructures, recycling them and re-using them less than necessary, when the reduction of raw materials is increasingly necessary.

Among others, they denounced that most of the organic residue currently collected in Navarra – which does not belong to the La Ribera and Sakana-communities – is transferred to the biometering plant of the TSN of Caparroso. As you have explained, it would be logical to compost with the waste collected through the fifth container or other systems, but instead, it is taken to the HTN plant for biogas production.

HTN belongs to the agricultural cooperative Valle de Odieta, which has a gigantic stable in Caparroso. In recent months, the mare with more than 5,000 cows is gaining popularity, as it has been reported that with its purine, mainly animal urine, manure and water, it pollutes the surrounding land.

Jesús Arbizu was the expert in Txurio residues in the presentation with Pablo Lorente and Martín Zelaia Sustraikide. As he reported, the HTN biometering plant was initially built for the management of the organic waste generated in the vaqueria, but today most of the organic waste collected separately in Navarre and from many other areas, such as slaughterhouses or sludge are added to it. Organic waste collected separately accounts for 22% of total waste collected in Navarre. This figure is far from the 50% provided for in the Navarra Waste Plan for 2020 - 70% for 2027. That is to say, in the end, it is not just that organic waste that is collected with great conscience in households is not used to compost, but that it becomes a contaminant of many lands in the centre of Navarra.

Environmental pollution

According to the report presented, all the residues produced in the TTM are biogas, and from this treatment a liquid called digestate is extracted for use as a fertilizer. In theory, the slurry should only be extracted from the cowboy, but since the HTN is used as a waste plant, this digestate is composed of numerous contaminating components such as heavy metals, nitrates or antibiotics from cow's milk.

According to Arbizu, the dispersion of the organic remains of the current cow in the soil would require 8,030 hectares and in the center of Navarra there is not enough soil for it. Therefore, with the mixture of many ingredients, a more contaminated digestate is achieved, and on the other hand, it is dispersed in less land than necessary, causing contamination of the land. Between 2014 and 2018, several entities of the Navarra administration have opened a total of 19 complaints procedures against the Valle de Odieta. Several environmental groups, including Grenpeac, denounced in February the contamination of the land that has been caused by the earthquake in recent hours.

Here is the video posted on the topic Ahotsa.infok: