The judicial investigation carried out in the last two years against the Sant Adrià de Besòs waste incinerator currently confirms suspicions that the plant exceeded the legal limit for emissions of polluting particles into the atmosphere. The judicial case opened for an alleged crime against the environment that is protected by the investigating court number 5 of Badalona, and that began after a complaint from the Environmental Prosecutor's Office based on the accusation of a group of neighbors, faces the final stretch . The judge must decide whether to accept further proceedings, file the case or send those responsible for the incinerator to trial.
To date, the defendants in this case have testified, the then president of Tersa, Eloi Badia – BComú councilor in the government of Ada Colau, current deputy and candidate for Girona de los Comuns –, and the company's head of operations, as well as plant technicians and experts. Two weeks ago, the current general director of Environmental Qualitat, Mireia Boya – former CUP deputy – and a technician from her department declared that they denied that the plant was emitting polluting particles and confirmed its correct operation.
The crux of the matter is to determine whether the incinerator burned the waste at a lower temperature than permitted to save gas consumption and did not guarantee the destruction of toxic substances with carcinogenic potential, which presumably ended up emitting particles that compromised the health of the residents of the area.
During these years, the reports carried out by the Nature Protection Service of the Civil Guard (Seprona) have concluded that the waste was burned at abnormal temperatures below 850ºC for two seconds established by European regulations, which can cause risk to the health of the residents of Sant Adrià. In a latest report, issued last January, and to which La Vanguardia has had access, the Civil Guard concludes that the plant “poses a risk to people's health” by not exceeding the critical temperature threshold to destroy the plants. dioxins and furans maintained over time. This, according to Seprona, represents “a risk of emissions to the population and can also harm the balance of natural systems.”
The question that justice must resolve is whether the temperature at which the waste was burned was correct and whether the system to measure those temperatures worked correctly. Tersa is a public company, 58.6% owned by Barcelona City Council and 41.4% owned by the Metropolitan Area, which is responsible for destroying waste from the majority of the Barcelona metropolitan area. The body in charge of supervising its operation is the Generalitat.
In the open judicial case, a key aspect is to certify the reliability of the company's measurement systems. To control the operation of the plant, there are two types of mechanisms. An automatic system that sends data on pollutants, temperatures and flows to the Generalitat. And some quarterly records that are carried out by a company external to Tersa and that are not measured continuously. Among the substances that the latter measures are dioxins.
The Civil Guard, in its report, maintains that "during the years 2017-2022, data on abnormal working temperatures were recorded for the incineration of urban solid waste that cannot be justified by physical means." That is to say, the temperatures recorded in the ovens are impossible. “It has not been possible to find a physical reasoning that justifies both the extreme temperatures observed in the data, as well as the sudden changes in short periods of time without consequences such as structural damage to the material of the ovens.” At the same time, the judicial police question the reliability of the data provided by the incinerator and point out that the plant was not correctly controlling the temperature of waste incineration.
What the company has always justified is that it made a calculation using an algorithm based on formulas. The Civil Guard questions this calculation method and maintains that, “due to the existence of a large amount of anomalous data” found to calculate the algorithm despite the fact that “these have been given as valid, both due to excess temperature and defect of "It is not possible to guarantee that the combustion processes are taking place in such a way as to ensure the destruction of contaminants such as dioxins and furans."
The spokesperson for the Aire Net entity, the neighborhood coordinator who filed the initial complaint, states that the Civil Guard has certified that “the temperatures reported to the Generalitat by Tersa are physically impossible.” She assures that they have indicated temperatures of 10,000 degrees when “there is no material on earth that can withstand more than 4,000 degrees,” she reproaches. “And the ovens don't support more than 1,800,” she says.
The investigation began in 2018 after a report by the professor at the Rovira i Virgili University, José Luis Domingo, warned that the concentrations of polluting substances in the Sant Adrià area were between three and five times higher than those in the areas close to other incinerators and that the risk of contracting cancer from exposure to dioxins was 2.3 times higher than acceptable. After those warnings, the neighbors put their suspicions at the disposal of the Prosecutor's Office, which in 2020 filed a complaint against the plant and the accused leaders that was accepted by the court in 2022. “Those accused would have been consciously carrying out and/or tolerating a series of practices contrary to the applicable environmental regulations and could be posing a serious risk to the health of the people who live around the plant,” the prosecutor maintained in his complaint.
