Old King Coal: Alcúdia's power station

In passing yesterday I mentioned that GOB is wishing to have the power station (Es Murterar) in Alcúdia closed. It isn't so much the closure of the station as putting an end to carbon emissions. The power station runs on a mixture of coal and oil.

GOB has a strong case. By any environmental standards, including those of plain, layman common sense, the power station is something of a nonsense. While the environmental arguments have raged for ages regarding the building of a golf course on one side of Albufera, they are as nothing compared with what goes on on another side, i.e. at the power station.

If you drive along the road to Sa Pobla, past Murterar, you will see the grass verges stained with coal dust. To the back of the station are whole "fields" of ash which is used, decreasingly, in the making of cement. Lorries that move the ash and the coal from the port are in regular motion. There is something that is particularly absurd in having these filth-generators shuttling along the roads of Alcúdia every three minutes.

GOB is calling for, and is apparently getting some support from industry, the elimination of the coal and oil firing and for its replacement by renewables, wind farms most notably. It is not the only ecological power that has been attacking the power station and the use of coal. Greenpeace have, in the past, tried to disrupt the shipping of coal to the port.

Whether the wind alternative makes economic sense will doubtless be open to scrutiny as will the feasibility of changing the generating source. What it might all cost and who might pay for it are other questions. But, for once, GOB are likely to be able to call on widespread support, politically, from business and from anyone who believes that the emissions can make little sense, especially given the location of Murterar.


More on ducks
Well, pity a poor old duck in Albufera which finds itself covered in coal dust. It needs to go and have a swim in the clean waters of Can Picafort. The fallout from Sunday's shenanigans continues, "The Bulletin" drawing attention to the fact that Can Picafort council is not taking the actions of the illegal duck tossers lightly. Unfortunately, there is no Can Picafort council. Ho hum. But what of Santa Margalida council?

While it is obliged to set plod off in pursuit of the miscreants, it is open to question quite how determined Santa Margalida town hall is. "The Bulletin" would have it that its actions are "another example of how the local authorities are cracking down on local custom involving animals". Of course they are. The same actions that inspired the sympathetic Power Rangers poster for the 2008 fiestas, that prompted the head of fiestas to declare, after this year's tossing, that "there always have been ducks and always will be" (and he wasn't referring to rubber ducks) and that suggested to the town hall's delegate in Can Picafort that he should be photographed with duck supporters.

The town hall opted for rubber ducks only reluctantly and only after it had been fined for allowing the live ducks to continue to be used. Its attitude now is equivocal. "The Bulletin" devotes little attention to matters Can Picafort or northern, and it's a shame that when it does it can manage to get things wrong and to fail to understand what the situation really is. Poor.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.