The little Basque village of Zubieta has an unlikely talent for a place its size: This community of 300 souls can make the trash of half a million people vanish into thin air.
Each year, as much as 200,000 metric tons of waste from across northwestern Spain is trucked to the Gipuzkoa treatment plant on the edge of the village. There it is sorted and fed into a giant incinerator, generating enough electricity to power 45,000 homes.
The Gipuzkoa plant was meant to be an eco-friendly alternative to landfill, but it’s backfiring. Locals have accused the plant’s owners and the regional government of violating European Union environmental laws and releasing hazardous levels of pollution into the surrounding water, air and soil. It’s even spurred a criminal court case.
“The court has to decide if the environmental permit [granted by the local government] is in accordance with [the] EU directive on pollution,” says Joseba Belaustegi Cuesta, a member of the grassroots GuraSOS movement that is campaigning against the incinerator.
