Lindane in Barakaldo: end of the nightmare?

2002/11/25 Carton Virto, Eider - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Ekologia
• Ingurumena

At the closing ceremony, the director of IHOBE, José Luis Aurrekoetxea, and the Basque Government's Environment Minister, Sabin Intxaurraga, summarized the measures taken to address the problem of lindane. The suitability of these measures was praised and it was affirmed that with the closure of Argalario's cell the end of the nightmare has arrived. At this time only 7 small sites remain to be treated.

Lindane in Euskal Herria

Lindane is a pesticide very harmful to the environment and the human being, but, as usual, it was known late. Being a broad-spectrum insecticide, in the 1950s they began to be used in abundance and until the 1980s they did not begin to take action against it. In Euskal Herria a lot took place in Bizkaia. For years there was an uncontrolled dumping of the waste and, for its awareness, many land was contaminated.

The Basque Government presented in 1995 the plan to fight the lindane and assumed the commitment of the Public Society of Environmental Management IHOBE to solve the problem. The report stated that the problem had two sides, on the one hand pure lindane and on the other the lands contaminated with lindane. It recommended the least possible transport of pure lindane, so its treatment was allowed at the place where they were stored. The installation was launched in June 1999 and the cleaning work ended at the end of last year.

As for HGH mixed with land and other industrial waste, there is still no technically and economically viable disposal process. For this reason, they chose to store the contaminated land in temporary security deposits until they found the technical solution to definitively solve the problem. These warehouses have been built in Loiu and Barakaldo. In Loiu 113,000 m ^{3 of land have} been reserved and in Barakaldo 412.000 m ³ of land have been reserved.

For at least a few years the soils must remain in the warehouses while researchers develop their cleaning methods. Juan Luis Ramos, researcher at the General Council of Scientific Research of Spain, pointed to a line of research for the cleaning of lands during the week of science and technology. In collaboration with GAIKER we are working with bacteria capable of degrading lindane.

Critics of neighbors and environmentalists

Residents of the Argalario area have expressed more than one complaint about the cell's proximity to streams and shopping areas. In this regard, at the closing ceremony of the Security Cell, the members of Ekologistak Martxan delivered a letter to Minister Sabin Intxaurraga. In the letter they were satisfied with the improvement of the situation of the lindane, but they remembered that the warehouse is a provisional solution and, above all, denounced urban speculation on contaminated lands. According to environmentalists, the work has focused on the interests of the construction of large commercial areas and the definitive destruction of the Zuloko-Ibarreta wetland.

Dossier about the lindane here.