Tenerife Las Americas Beach Flooded By Sewage Burst
This is the moment a fountain of faeces can be seen erupting from a broken sewage pipe in the middle of one of Tenerife’s most popular tourist resorts.
The incident took place on the popular surfing beach of Las Americas, in the southern area of the island of Tenerife, in the Spanish region of the Canary Islands, off the west Coast of Morocco.
The video, shared by an outraged social media user, shows murky brown water spurting out of the tube on the beach.
The person filming can be heard saying: “All this contaminated water being pumped straight into the sea. The smell is unbearable, you just can’t stand it,”
Another video of the scene shows the broken pipe cordoned off and council workers attending the area. The man filming, can be heard saying: “Seems that something is broken here, it smells so bad of sewage and the water is brown.”
The situation was also reported on by the general director of Diversity from the Canary Island Government, saying: “this took place on the beach of Las Americas, in front of McDonalds. Lot of things to do in our land to get quality facilities”.
According to local media, a council report published various years ago alleged that in Tenerife around 57 million litres of black water are pumped straight into the sea without being treated.
The lack of water treatment facilities in Spain has led to the country being issued the largest fine in history from the European Union.
According to local media, the country received the directive to fix the issue 29 years ago and continues to accumulate fines which now amount to 32.7 million EUR (29.3 million GBP). which continues to rise as Spain has yet to fix the problem in many areas of the country.
This is a subject which causes much outrage between locals, who accuse the government of negligence and putting tourism over caring for the environment.
One social media user wrote: “This disaster has to come out in all the newspapers because this time we could see what is pumped daily into the bottom of the sea. This daily disgrace which destroys the fauna should not be allowed to happen. Remember the fish that ends up on our plate, we are eating shit.”
Whilst another wrote: “Shameful, whoever governs, corruption shines brighter than the sun.”
According to local media, the 25-year-old tube which was carrying ‘black’ or wastewater had broken and employees from the Water Board were able to repair the pipe after several interventions.
The city council of Arona took samples of the water on Saturday in order to find out if the water had polluted the coast, the results of which are yet to be released.
The beach and surrounding areas were reportedly kept open during the whole week despite the leakage.