Nine thousand residents, a climate that has delivered less and less rain in recent years, and an agricultural sector that depends almost entirely on water the island manufactures itself, because natural fresh water on El Hierro is scarce. Against that backdrop, on 3 August the Canary Islands’ Department of Territorial Policy, Territorial Cohesion and Water handed over to the El Hierro island council the completed expansion of the Los Cangrejos desalination plant in Valverde.
The work, costing 1.9 million euros, involved rebuilding one of the plant’s modules, installing a new rack of 140 reverse osmosis membranes capable of producing 1,200 cubic metres a day, expandable to 1,800 in an emergency. Combined with earlier work finished months before at the La Restinga plant in El Pinar, the result is a 15% increase in the island’s desalinated water output, alongside a 30% cut in energy consumption. Between the two plants, daily capacity has risen from just over 5,000 to 6,000 cubic metres.
Deputy minister for Water and Emergencies Marcos Lorenzo described a process “started two years ago” to strengthen supply and “mitigate the water crisis of recent years,” noting that the new technology also helps contain an energy cost that weighs more heavily here than elsewhere, given the archipelago’s reliance on imported fuel.
Agriculture minister Narvay Quintero added a detail that hits closer to home for local growers: in parallel, the department is funding, with 1.5 million euros, two containerised desalination units dedicated purely to irrigation, which will bring around 900,000 cubic metres of water a year to roughly a hundred hectares of farmland, directly benefiting more than 250 farmers on the island.
There is also a less technical but not minor detail: the works included soundproofing the modules, which will allow water production around the clock without disturbing nearby residents, a real constraint for plants that until now presumably had to limit night-time operation.
Island council president Alpidio Armas called water security “an absolute priority,” adding that the real challenge now lies in distribution and storage networks, since producing more water counts for little if it does not reach every corner of the island with the same reliability. For a place like El Hierro, already internationally known for renewable energy thanks to its Gorona del Viento hydro-wind plant, water remains the less-told but arguably more decisive front in its push for self-sufficiency.
