The Government delays until 2023 the registration to control hydroelectric plants

The Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge is working on a computer application of water registration for the control and monitoring of hydroelectric power plants and water use. However, it has delayed its implementation until more than a year from now, during the first half of 2023.

This register will keep updated the information of the exploitations for the management of the data of these plants, will automate any modification in the certificates and the inscriptions of the Water Registry and will have permanently updated the geographical location of the catchments and uses of the water.

This is stated in the response of the Government registered in Congress, and collected by Europa Press, to the spokesman for Ecological Transition of Unidas Podemos and president of this commission in the Lower House, Juantxo López de Uralde, on his promise to promote a public and accessible registry of these concessions.

UNIDAS PODEMOS REGRETS THE LACK OF A PUBLIC REGISTRY

In his question, Uralde pointed out that in July 2019 the Ministry led by Teresa Ribera licked not having a public registry where to consult the expiration of the concessions, and that it prepared one with a view to having it ready in two years. After the deadline, he regrets, there is no public registry to consult this expiration.

And it is that Uralde pointed out that the lack of this registry prevented the control of the expiration of concessions, which facilitated extensions in them in the face of the change of their conditions of exploitation, a new contest or, directly, their reversal for their public management, as in the case of the Ricobayo dam (Zamora).

The flow of this exploitation, whose concession expired in 2010 but was expanded in 1990 without being published in any official gazette, was emptied by Iberdrola this summer to maximize the uses, in the middle of the price crisis, and aroused criticism from municipal, regional authorities and the Government itself, motivating a tightening of the regulations on these resources.

RECORDS ARE ALREADY AVAILABLE AND YOU CAN APPLY FOR CERTIFICATION

However, Ecological Transition explains in its response that the basin organizations already maintain a Water Registry in which they register ex officio the concessions, including those for the production of electrical energy, and the changes authorized for their ownership or their characteristics.

These records, apostille, are public and it is possible to request certifications on their content from the basin body.

In any case, it informs that through the Subdirectorate of Hydraulic Public Domain and Infrastructures of the General Directorate of Water, and in collaboration with the basin agencies, the Ministry is working on the development of the aforementioned computer application of the Water Registry, as an information system.

A TELEMATIC, UP-TO-DATE AND IMMEDIATELY ACCESSIBLE RECORD

The objectives of the same are to allow a “dynamic management” of the data of these uses, the automation of the certificates with legal validity, the acceleration of the entries, modifications and outputs of inscriptions in the Water Registry, the permanent updating of the same and the geographical location of the catchments and uses of the water.

It will be integrated, according to the Ministry, by “elements and information of an alphanumeric and cartographic nature, referring to the characteristics of the use of water (characteristics of the right, collection and use) and its description, and elements of a documentary nature that will contain the image of the administrative or judicial title that grants or recognizes the right”.

“It will be a telematic registry that will keep the information updated and will guarantee immediate access to it and assess the legality of the rights to the use of water,” says the Ministry, which in any case expects to be able to have this computer application operational in the first half of 2023.

Source: The Country