The judicial investigation carried out over the last two years against the Sant Adrià de Besòs waste incinerator confirms for the moment the suspicions that the plant exceeded the legal limit of emissions of polluting particles into the atmosphere. The legal case opened for an alleged crime against the environment which is under the jurisdiction of the court of inquiry number 5 of Badalona, and which began after a complaint by the Environmental Prosecutor's Office based on the accusation of a group of neighbors, still the final stretch. The judge will have to decide whether to accept further proceedings, close the case or send those responsible for the incinerator to trial.
So far, the defendants in this case have declared, the then president of Tersa, Eloi Badia, - councilor of BComú in the government of Ada Colau, current deputy and candidate for Girona dels comuns -, the company's chief operating officer , and also the plant technicians and experts. Two weeks ago, the current general director of Environmental Quality, Mireia Boya – a former CUP deputy – and a technician from her department stated that they denied that the plant was emitting polluting particles and ratified 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, so that it allegedly ended up emitting particles that they compromised the health of the residents of the area.
During these years, the reports made by the nature protection service of the Civil Guard (Seprona) have concluded that the waste was burned at abnormal temperatures below 850 degrees for the two seconds established by European regulations, which can cause risk for the health of the residents of Sant Adrià. In a latest report, issued in January, and to which La Vanguardia has had access, the Civil Guard concludes that the plant "poses a risk to people's health" because it does not exceed the critical temperature threshold to destroy dioxins and furans maintained over time. This, according to Seprona, represents "an emission risk for the population and which can also harm the balance of natural systems". The question that the justice has to decide is whether the temperature at which the waste was burned was correct and whether the system for measuring these temperatures was working correctly. Tersa is a public company owned by Barcelona City Council, 58.6%, and by the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, 41.4%, which is responsible for destroying most of the conurbation's waste from Barcelona. The body in charge of supervising its operation is the Generalitat.
In the open court 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 pollutant, temperature and flow data to the Generalitat. And quarterly records that are carried out by a company external to Tersa and that are not measured continuously. Among the substances measured by the latter are dioxins.
The Civil Guard, in its report, states that "during the years 2017-2022, abnormal working temperature data were recorded for the incineration of urban solid waste that cannot be justified by physical means". In other words, the temperatures recorded in the ovens are impossible. "It has not been possible to find a physical reasoning that justifies neither the extreme temperatures observed in the data nor the abrupt changes in short periods of time without consequences such as structural damage to the furnace material". 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 properly 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 method of calculation and states that "due to the existence of a large amount of anomalous data" found to calculate the algorithm despite the fact that "these data have been given as valid, both due to excess temperature and temperature defect, it is not possible to give reliability to the fact that the combustion processes are being carried out in such a way as to ensure the destruction of pollutants such as dioxins and furans".
The spokeswoman for the Aire Net organization, the neighborhood coordinator who made the initial complaint, affirms that the Civil Guard has certified that "the temperatures reported to the Generalitat by Tersa are physically impossible". He 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", he criticizes. "And the ovens cannot support more than 1,800", he adds.
The investigation began in 2018 after a report by Rovira i Virgili University professor José Luís Domingo warned that the concentrations of polluting substances around Sant Adrià were between three and five times higher than those in areas close to other incinerators and that the risk of contracting cancer due to exposure to dioxins was 2.3 times higher than admissible. After these warnings, the residents put their suspicions at the disposal of the Prosecutor's Office, which in 2020 filed a complaint against the plant and the accused leaders which was accepted by the court in 2022. "The accused would have been carrying out or knowingly tolerating a series of practices contrary to the applicable environmental regulations and could be posing a serious risk to the health of people living in the vicinity of the plant", stated the prosecutor in his complaint
