Monday, August 29, 2011

Next case

And so the file of cases against the former mayor of Bigastro, José Joaquín Moya, goes on. The judge, Carlos San Martín in Orihuela Court No 1 is now examining the complaint made by José Antonio Ricart for the PP and Carmen Brown for the Greens regarding the construction of a solar farm at La Pedrera.

In 2006 a concession was given to Ecomed Solar to build a solar farm on public land at the old stone quarry.Those rights were later transferred to the Bigastro based company Eurener.

Work started by clearing thousands of square metres of land and in the process destroying a forest of pine trees. Seprona were alerted along with the Department of Planning and the Environment. The former mayor revoked the license he had granted for the work but of course by then the damage had been done.

A number of complaints against the former mayor revolve around him taking short cuts in the proper legal processes of obtaining permission for his projects. In his indecent haste to get these projects off the ground, he would grant local permission and seek regional consent at a later stage. It was in those cases where regional consent was subsequently not granted that José Joaquín Moya came unstuck.

The former mayor would probably argue that many of his projects were for the benefit of the town. What he failed to understand is that you can’t just rip up an area of natural beauty and hope that everyone will be happy especially when they realise that the concession to do this would eventually be transferred to a company related to one of the socialist councillors.

Incidentally it is noticeable that Eurener, who expanded rapidly taking over several premises in the town to assemble solar panels, are now cutting back. That is neither good news for them nor for the town where they provided employment.

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