A report published by Alcudia Town Hall regarding the route of the second electricity cable from the mainland contradicts the consensus reached last July. The town hall was party to discussions which led to the confirmation of the cable's entry point being on the Bay of Pollensa, which had been the preferred option of Red Electrica and the Balearic and Spanish governments from the time when the project was first presented.
Well before the meeting last July, the town hall had commissioned its own report by the Balearic Centre for Applied Biology (CBBA). The report casts serious doubts on the justifications for the Bay of Pollensa entry point and argues the case for the Bay of Alcudia. The presence of posidonia seagrass meadows has been the main justification.
The CBBA report indicates that "dense and continuous posidonia meadows are documented in the Bay of Pollensa". By contrast, the Bay of Alcudia has fragmented, low-density posidonia. "Posidonia seagrass is absent in the first 450 or 500 metres of Alcudia Bay", a finding that contradicts the official mapping included in the project's environmental impact assessment.
Regarding the land route to the substation on the industrial estate, the report points out that the Bay of Pollensa option (entering at Sa Ferradura in Bonaire) would entail thirteen kilometres of cable laying, including through protected areas. On Alcudia Bay, no new land construction work would be needed.
"The Alcudia route runs for less than one kilometre and in an industrial area." This is the report's reference to an alternative for Alcudia Bay. Rather than entering at the port, the cable would enter somewhere around the border of Alcudia and Playa de Muro and then head in a more or less straight line to the substation.
Red Electrica had ruled this out because of the existence of paleochannels that do not offer good conditions for the stability of the power cable on the seabed. The CBBA report, however, maintains it would be technically viable.
The town hall has forwarded the report to the relevant bodies and is asking that this independent study be taken into account in the processing of the project.