STAFF REPORTER
THE Balearic government has spent 8 million euros on reinforcing and clearing out 100 kilometres of flood water channels (torrents) around the islands, said regional Environment Minister, Miquel Angel Grimalt, yesterday.
Responding to a Parliamentary question in Palma, Grimalt said that if Central Government had made the 15 million euros available to the Balearics that it had said it was going to do, local government could have done a great deal more. The Minister described the work that his department had undertaken in clearing the flood channels as rooting out tangled vegetation which impeded the flow of high levels of rainwater down towards the sea, cleaning out rubbish and debris from the dry river bed and shoring up walling which bordered the channels. Grimalt said that it was a pity that no Balearic MP attending national parliamentary sessions in Madrid had backed the proposal by Catalan MPs that the 15 million euros allocated to the Balearics under a torrent cleaning agreement should be included in the state budget for 2010.