Archive for the 'Local news' Category

Expansion of the Gran Canaria Airport

Sunday, February 1st, 2009
Gran Canaria Airport ist the fifth largest spanish airport and the largest airport of the Canary Islands. Allowing 53 landings and take-offs per hour, the important airport handled over 10 million passengers and 37232 tonnes of cargo in 2006. The airport is located to the east of the island on the Bahía de Gando and about 18 kilometers from the capital of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. To improve efficiency, director Francisco Macho confirmed an expandation of Gran Canaria Airport completed by the year 2020. The expandation will effect an increase of flight operations up to 80 flights per hour and is to be realised in three steps. The first construction phase should be finished in 2011 containing the extension of parking sites. The second period includes the constitution of a third runway. For this purpose the motorway GC-1 will be diverted. Start of construction is in 2015. ...

Drinkable tap water…

Thursday, October 25th, 2007
The tap water in the city of Las Palmas, is known to be very bad tasting. Though the sanitary quality of the water is acceptable already, enough to be drunk, the taste is not as good to be comparable with bottled water. This is about to change. José Luís Talavera, the production director of 'Emalsa', Las Palmas' water company, stated that they're testing a new system at the 'Las Palmas III' desalination plant which will be working in a matter of more or less a month. This new system will treat the water to achieve a better taste of it, for now its rather disgusting than tasteful. Well, that is good news. Its only thought to be done in Las Palmas at first, for its very expensive to be done anywhere else. Either way, great news, one step more towards future.
Posted by klopapier

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Leak!!

Wednesday, October 17th, 2007
As you might have heard, the night of sunday, a pipe which supplies the Unelco Power station with fuel-oil, the one situated at the entrance of Las Palmas, got damaged, causing a yet unknown amount of fuel-oil to get out and affect a shore stretch of 600m at the 'Las Gaviotas' beach near 'Jinamar'. The same night 'Disa', the company in charge of the supply, was alerted of this problem aswell as the 'Guardia Civil' and the local environment office. Though, there was barely nothing to do until the next day when the diggers started to clean the sand and the adjacent land, which luckily acted as a 'sponge', impeding huge ammounts of fuel-oil getting into the water. The cleaning works still continue today as this last two days the workers have been removing as much as possible with shovels and their bare hands. Tomorrow they will continue but with pressurizee ...

Pictures of yesterdays tragedy

Saturday, September 8th, 2007
Here you can see the covered bodies of immigrants after their death was certified and several agents of the 'Guardia Civil', two of them recovering a body from the waterat the 'Risco Verde' beach in Agüimes. You can also see the half sunk 'patera' and it being pulled out of the water later on and the enormous efforts done supported by the rescue helicopter and the sea rescue patrol boat. Really sad images that immigration gives us almost every day. :( ...

Worse than immigration

Friday, September 7th, 2007
If the immigration for itself, wasn't hard enough, as people give up all their savings for just an opportunity to make it alive to a 1st world country, to try for a better life, risking their lives and normaly resulting in an almost certain repatriation, things like this unluckily happen more often every time. The tragedy happened yesterday at daybreak when a 'patera', those small, unstable boats, subsaharian immigrants use to get here from Africa, arrived at the 'risco verde' beach in Agüimes at darkness, or at least that is what the occupants thought. What really happened is that they docked to an underwater rock formation, 20 meters off shore, which the immigrants thought to be the beach, but which in reality was surrounded by 2 meters(6 feet) of water, causing 10 of the 16 immigrants to drown. The Chief of the 'GEAS', the special group for scuba activities from the 'Guardia ...