“Mayor! Where are you?” The cry echoed this Wednesday in the central Plaza de San Marcelo. According to local chronicleshundreds of people responded to the call of the Barrio de la Lastra Neighborhood Association to try to stop the construction of the gigantic biomass plant planned in the south of the city. The point is that this is not an isolated march: the residents of La Lastra and Puente Castro have joined forces in a joint mobilization that reflects the fatigue of the southern neighborhoods in the face of an imminent environmental impact.
But beyond the noise of the banners, there is a very specific fear. As Ruth Sanz explainsneighborhood spokesperson for La Lastra, the big hidden problem will come “when the wind changes direction.” The citizen warning is blunt: if the plant comes into operation, not only will the smell reach other neighborhoods in the capital, but the air will carry harmful substances. For this reason, with the motto of “our health is not for sale”, the neighbors demand that the excavators be stopped.
The beginning of the indignation. To understand this social outbreak you have to look at the offices. As detailed in the specialized magazine Rethemethe project promoted by the Junta de Castilla y León and the City Council aims to create a “Sustainable Heat Network”. Through Somacyl, the regional administration seeks to build a thermal power plant that supplies heating and hot water to more than 28,000 homes and 150 buildings in the capital. However, the outrage also has a political component. As emphasized by Herald of Leonresidents directly accuse the socialist mayor, José Antonio Diez, of serious inconsistency: they remember that, when he was in the opposition, he led protests against a similar biomass plant in Cantamilanos, and now allows an installation that is seven times larger.
Furthermore, the neighborhood anger lies in how it has been created. As revealed elDiario.esthe Board has processed this immense 22-hectare complex – located at the foot of the city, next to the municipal cemetery and the Torío and Bernesga rivers – under the controversial figure of ‘Regional Project’. This administrative movement serves, as this medium explains, to “shield” the complex, unify contracts through urgency, accelerate expropriations and avoid local urban planning obstacles.
Green energy or environmental risk? Green energy or environmental risk? The project stages a head-on clash of realities. In the official discourse, it is the definitive ecological initiative since the administrations They defend that the infrastructure It is key to decarbonization. They promise that it will allow more than 1,200 fossil fuel boilers to be progressively turned off, will prevent the emission of 35,000 tons of CO₂ annually and will allow neighboring communities to save between 20% and 30% on their bills.
The dark side of this “green promise” is provided by environmental defenders. As argued Ecologists in Action in their allegationsinstallation of these dimensions near inhabited areas is environmentally unsustainable. The entity warns that combustion at an industrial level will cause highly dangerous emissions, releasing “benzopyrene, heavy metals and particles” into the air. Furthermore, environmentalists throw down the argument of resource sustainability. The complex will swallow up to 128,000 tons of forest chips annually – a volume that threatens to overexploit the forests – and will consume a whopping 35,000 cubic meters of water from the urban network, without the City Council having issued technical reports that guarantee that this will not affect the population’s supply.
Pharaonic figures and legal mud. The size of the project is difficult to assimilate without looking at the pure data. According to the technical data provided by Leon News, The horizon of southern Leon will be modified by the installation of four enormous chimneys 35 meters high (a level equivalent to an eleven-story residential block). At a logistical level, the activity of the furnaces will generate 4,480 tons of ash, slag and dust each year, and will cause an incessant daily movement of up to 20 heavy trucks through the neighborhood. With such an impact on the horizon, the battle is no longer only in the street, but in the courts. As reported Herald of Leonthe project is deeply judicialized. Neighbors and environmentalists are waiting for the Court to resolve a contentious-administrative appeal filed against the municipal licenses granted for the pipeline network.
The opacity of the process has fanned the flame of suspicion. The neighborhood spokesperson denounced in the Plaza de San Marcelo that the works began “without the relevant licenses,” calling the operation a “business of two.” The indignation and distrust reach such a point that the neighbors have come to predict that in the future this case will “blow through the air” just as the well-known ‘Wind Plot’ did, demonstrating that everything responds to “the interests of certain people and not to a common good.
León’s countdown. While the judges deliberate and the mobilizations do not stop, the clock is ticking. An unappealable countdown has begun: there is a legal limit of five years for the infrastructure to take shape or, on the contrary, the project to decline definitively.
The city of León thus appears at a historical crossroads. On one side of the balance, the institutional dream of establishing itself as a pioneering city in Europe in energy transition and thermal independence. On the other, the terror of thousands of families who see an industrial monster installed at the door of their homes. In the coming years the outcome will be decided; Meanwhile, the southern neighborhoods will continue taking to the streets, looking askance at the sky and hoping that justice will act before the wind changes.
Image | Wikieditorarigurosa and La Lastra Neighborhood Association
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