A mountain of over 40,000 tons of **invasive Asian algae** removed from the beaches of Tarifa stands next to the city’s **wastewater treatment plant**. They should not be there, as the Spanish Government considers them **urban solid waste** and, therefore, they must be stored in an authorized facility for their incineration and burial.
However, if the Tarifa City Council were to transport them to the regional landfill in Los Barrios, it would be an economic disaster for the municipality. Loading and transporting them for treatment would cost five million euros. The central government states that they are already **working to halt their spread**.
The Tarifa City Council no longer knows what to do with the **tons of algae** they collect from their beaches, which have been piling up in a temporary landfill since 2019.
“No one shows up here,” complains the deputy mayor of the town, Jorge Benítez. “We are alone facing this environmental disaster,” he laments.
## Solutions to the algae problem and conversion to Green energy
A new threat has emerged on the coasts of Cadiz: invasive algae. These **prevent fishermen from working**, but there could be solutions, such as **transforming them into green energy**.
Transporting the piled-up algae to another landfill for treatment would cost around 5 million euros. The City Council expresses that it is unaffordable, so they demand a solution from the Andalusian Regional Government and the Spanish Government.
“It is negligence and irresponsibility on the part of supramunicipal administrations not to address this situation alongside the City Council,” declares Benítez. They do not want to eradicate it because “scientists have already explained to us that it has come to stay,” but they do seek “a solution to mitigate.” Among the options is the **conversion of waste into biofuels**, a project whose feasibility is already being studied.
## A pending solution
The central government maintains that they are already working to **halt the expansion of this algae**, although they attribute the management competence to the Regional Government. In this way, they indicate that the Regional Government “could request state aid.” Furthermore, the Regional Executive argues that the City Council should solve it because it is a “municipal waste.”
Faced with this situation, residents are exhausted. “It’s a big problem,” says a neighbor. “During the tourist season, it’s a problem,” indicates another resident. “They invade everything, and there is no fishing,” laments a resident of Tarifa.
The Tarifa City Council ensures that, to this day, this is only a problem on the Cadiz coast, but in a few years, it will **become a plague that floods the entire Spanish coast**.
## What are Asian invasive algae?
Its scientific name is **Rugulopteryx okamurae**, but it is known as Asian algae because it originates from the coasts of Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
It is brownish in color and mainly grows on rocky bottoms. In 2020, the Spanish Government declared it an **invasive exotic species**.
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