Empuriabrava: fines for sick palms
EMPURIABRAVA / CATALONIA / SPAIN: Anyone who has been informed by the Town Hall of Castelló that there are palm trees in his estate that have been attacked by the palm weevil without the owner taking the necessary measures now has to bear the consequences: there are substantial fines. Although these are in most cases at 500 euros, the penalty can reach up to 3,000 euros in certain cases. The city council had ordered that the infested trees would first have to receive one or more poisonous showers from above, before the dead trees would be felled and their remains disposed of. The poison shower was therefore called absolutely necessary, because otherwise the beetles would have escaped from their nests and new trees could have infected. In addition, the larvae were to be killed before they could develop into new insects.
Should it not be possible for a locality of no more than 20 000 inhabitants to have the local government hire a multilingual secretary who is capable of storing foreign names and addresses neatly in community computers so that concerns of this urbanization are communicated to the homeowners become?