WRITTEN QUESTION E-4007/00

by Carles-Alfred Gasòliba i Böhm (ELDR) to the Commission

(21 December 2000)

Subject: Sewer in Borriana

Borriana, a township in the Valencian Autonomous Community, has over 26 000 inhabitants. The town has a waste water treatment plant and a system of sewers to feed it. Most of the inhabitants live in the inner part of the town, while the areas along the shorefront house some 4 000 people on an all-year-round basis, rising to between 14 000 and 15 000 in the summer months because the town is in a tourist area.

The northern part of the shorefront residential area is only a few meters from the beach. Classified as a single-family residential zone, with a large number of households, it possesses neither sewers nor any form of waste water treatment for the waste produced by these households. Despite repeated requests from the local people, for the last three years Borriana town council has been holding up the construction of the sewer which would take the waste water to the existing treatment plant, and prevent it going straight into the Mediterranean.

Council Directive 91/271/EEC(1) of 21 May 1991 concerning urban waste water treatment obliges the Member States to guarantee that all agglomerations with a population equivalent of over 2 000 be provided with collecting and treatment systems for urban waste water; furthermore, for sensitive regions with over 10 000 inhabitants, these systems had to be operational by 31 December 1998. For non-sensitive areas of over 15 000 inhabitants, the deadline is 31 December 2000. Borriana town council cannot possibly meet these deadline given its continuing dilatoriness in constructing the Avenida de la Constitución sewer.

The town council's failure to meet the Directive's provisions is damaging the environment on the whole of the Borriana shoreline; the sea is quite badly polluted not only by household waste water but by water from three irrigation ditches into which flows not only water from the township but also the run-off from the irrigation of the citrus orchards and waste from various small businesses which also use the ditches as sewers.

The deterioration of the coast within the Borriana municipal boundaries is causing significant damage to marine flora and fauna and to the beaches. What measures does the Commission intend to take to ensure that environmental requirements are met within the deadline laid down by Directive 91/271/EEC?

(1) OJ L 135, 30.5.1991, p. 40.

Answer given by Mrs Wallström on behalf of the Commission

(28 February 2001)

As pointed out by the Honourable Member, Council Directive 91/271/EEC of 21 May 1991 concerning urban waste water treatment requires Member States to ensure that all built-up areas having more than 2 000 inhabitant equivalents (IE) (an inhabitant equivalent is a unit for measuring organic pollution representing the average pollution produced by one person per day) are provided with a system for collecting and treating urban waste water. The basic treatment level required is secondary treatment (i.e. biological). Thus built-up areas with more than 15 000 IE must have been provided with a secondary collection and treatment system by 31 December 2000. Built-up areas with more than 10 000 IE which discharge their waste water into bodies of water identified as sensitive by the Member States must have been provided with a collection system and a form of treatment that is more stringent than secondary by 31 December 1998. The smallest built-up areas have up to 31 December 2005 in which to acquire a collection and treatment system.

The Commission has just completed its checks on the situation as regards the first deadline of 31 December 1998 and will very soon publish a report setting out the results of those checks, together with the treatment situation in all of the major European cities having more than 150 000 IE.

The Borriana conurbation, in the Valencia Autonomous Community in Spain, which, according to the Honourable Member, has more than 26 000 inhabitants, discharges its effluents into a non-sensitive area. The deadline for collecting and treating those effluents was thus 31 December 2000.

The Commission has just begun checking the situation in all of the conurbations affected by the deadline of 31 December 2000. The Commission is already aware that, apart from the Borriana conurbation, a certain number of Spanish conurbations had not met the requirements of the Directive by that deadline. When those checks have been made the Commission will, where appropriate, launch an infringement procedure against Spain for failure to meet the 31 December 2000 deadline.