Residents of the Blue Hill urbanisation in San Miguel de Salinas have requested urgent action from the San Miguel de Salinas Town Hall to improve the waste collection service. Their petition calls for the immediate removal of bulky waste, pruning debris, and accumulated garbage, the installation of more containers, and the replacement of those that are damaged. The residents have provided photographic evidence showing how waste, especially pruning debris and bulky waste, is overflowing the containers. In the case of the pruning debris, which is turning the container areas into urban dumps, some of it has not been collected by the waste management company, Actúa, for two months. There are also numerous areas being used to dump bulky waste, as the residents have been able to demonstrate.
The petition is signed by Stefan Pokroppa, as a neighbour representative of the Blue Hill housing estate, and requests that the measures demanded be granted “with the utmost urgency” to restore an adequate waste collection service for the residents of the estate.
The residents’ request also asks for increased service during peak season, with waste collection at least twice a day. They argue that this measure is necessary to prevent overflowing containers and the resulting health problems and unsightly appearance caused by accumulated waste.
The document states that residents have repeatedly reported the poor service and the lack of collection of bulky waste and pruning debris through the Town Hall’s incident hotline. According to the request, no improvements have been made to date.
The situation these residents are reporting is shared by practically all the housing developments outside the town centre of San Miguel de Salinas, a municipality that currently has 8,400 inhabitants, although that number can double during this time of year given the number of second homes in the area. This occurs in El Galán, Las Filipinas, Eagle Nest, Torrestrella, La Balsa, Ciudad de las Comunicaciones, Sus A Los Invernaderos, and Blue Lagoon, as well as the San Miguel de Salinas countryside. These are housing developments and scattered settlements located several kilometres away.
Residents’ complaints about the ongoing deficiencies in this basic service have intensified this summer and now extend to large areas of the municipality, as confirmed by the San Miguel de Salinas Residents’ Association. However, the current situation is not solely due to summer occupancy and the service’s inherent shortcomings.
The company providing the service is Actúa (Hozono Global Group). It is operating without a current contract after exhausting all extensions. Since it is an essential service and the Town Council cannot discontinue it, the company is charging according to the terms of its previous contract. However, the company has requested a price update from the Town Council for this service provided without a contract, something the PSOE-IU governing coalition considers administratively irregular. The company must wait until the final settlement of its current service contract, once the next one is awarded, to request these updates.
Faced with this refusal, the company itself has allegedly begun to discontinue some of its standard services, such as the weekly collection of garden waste, a fact that is evident on the streets. Some areas where this waste accumulates, which intensifies from June onwards with the arrival of the second-home occupancy season, have gone two months without collection.
The company’s attitude has forced the Town Council, according to the same sources, to hire a grapple truck with its own operators to begin removing, at least, the pruning debris. This has already been done in the Ciudad de las Comunicaciones, Torreestrella, and La Balsa, and will begin this week in the entire Blue Lagoon, Blue Hill, Eagle Nest, Filipinas, and El Galán area.
The technical and legal specifications for putting the contract out to tender are practically finished and the municipality wants to put it out to tender before the end of the year.
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