A Vic court is investigating Josep Maria Tost, who spent a decade at the head of the Waste Agency of Catalonia, for the allegedly irregular transfer of waste from Pinós to Fitó, both in the municipality of Seva (Osona), as judicial sources have confirmed to EL PAÍS. The activity in these two facilities, which were previously quarries, has been a source of discomfort for residents of nearby urbanizations for more than two decades. Although they should have only been rune deposits from the construction, they also ended up receiving other materials that pose a risk to the environment, according to the judicial case in which the two top officials of .
Last Thursday, October 24, as confirmed by the same sources, Seprona agents of the Civil Guard searched two company offices by court order: one located in the Fitó landfill (the only one that now remains active) and another next to the City Council, which owns 20% of the company. The joint company was established during the time of the historic convergent mayor Josep Palmarola – who governed for 32 years, until 2011 – and also appears in the case as a legal entity. The judge, who in recent months has ordered wiretaps in a case that has remained secret until now, attributes crimes against the environment and an organized group to those under investigation. Judicial sources point out that these wiretaps have opened up new lines of investigation.
Juanma Carrasco is a resident of Can Garriga, an urbanization south of Seva of about 250 people that lives overlooking the waste esplanade open in the mountain. It has suffered the noise, the dust, the movement of trucks. Over time it has also witnessed the appearance of strange gases and bad odors coming, first, from the Pinós landfill. “This was not supposed to be a landfill, but just a rune deposit to cover the hole left by the old quarry. But if gases came out, it means that organic matter was being dumped there, materials for which they did not have permits,” he says. Carrasco was an active part of the Stop Pedreres Osona Sud platform, which reported these anomalies to put an end to an activity that they consider illegal. The neighbors reported, even then (as confirmed by the investigation) that “improper materials” that posed a threat to the environment were being thrown in Pinós.
For the residents of Can Garriga and the Pinós urbanization, the turning point came in 2018. The mountain where the landfills are located was moving at a rate of two centimeters a month, according to the technicians. A geological atrocity that, supposedly, had caused it to lead from Barcelona to Vic and that runs close to the exploitation. Although the cause of the dents in the asphalt is still the subject of controversy, the Generalitat paralyzed the exploitation of the landfill due to safety risks. And he ordered, also quickly, works to partially empty (about 300,000 cubic meters) the Pinós landfill.
The work, which cost more than 10 million euros, involved transferring the material to the nearby Fitó landfill. Both are in Seva, but south of the municipal area and far from the old town; However, closer are the urban centers of the towns of Centelles and Aiguafreda. The neighbors opposed the transfer and filed a complaint with the Mossos d’Esquadra. “We never understood why shit had to be moved from one place to another, and why this transfer had to be paid for with money from the citizens of Catalonia,” Carrasco laments.
The alleged irregularities in the management of that operation now point to the Waste Agency of Catalonia. Its director at the time, Josep Maria Tost, allegedly authorized the transfer of inappropriate materials between two landfills that, a priori, could only contain rune. Tost was another historic mayor of CiU, in this case of Riudecanyes (Baix Camp). In 2011 he was appointed head of the Generalitat public body with powers in the matter, a position that he would not leave until a decade later. Currently, Tost is still linked to waste planning and management, but in the private sector: he is a consultant at Acciona, Llorente y Cuenca and Plat Institute, and in his Linkedin profile he defines himself as an “entrepreneur” and “facilitator”. Although he has the status of being investigated, he has not yet given a statement before the judge.
The Civil Guard later joined the Mossos’ initial investigation due to a chance incident. The Gloria storm, which hit Catalonia in January 2020, overflowed a stream, caused the water level to rise and caused the materials accumulated in Fitó to infiltrate. Some workers who were taking water with trucks asked that it be used to irrigate an area and they became dizzy. This is how the armed institute began its investigations, which under the tutelage of the court made its first move in April of that year. During an inspection, Seprona detected that the landfill dumped contaminated waste into a stream of running water: the illegal discharges were mixed with clean water and, through a partially buried channel, reached the stream. The Civil Guard then explained that, as a result of the decomposition of urban waste (which the landfill did not have permits to store), liquids emerged in a small pond at the bottom of the old quarry.
