The Irish writer WB Yeats once described the events around the 1916 Rising as being “a terrible beauty”. The term could also be used to describe Lemoiz, a small rural village which sleepily rolls down to the sea and the picturesque fishing village of Armintza but it is also a village which still bears the hallmarks of the struggle to stop the first of what would have been four nuclear power stations in the Basque Country. It was unfortunately too late to stop the destruction of the once beautiful cove of Basordas which still bears testimony to a struggle which cost so many lives. But travelling around the Bizkaian coast there’s nothing to explain what happened and both younger generations and foreigners are generally taken back when the ghost of the nuclear power station appears before them.
However, if the ugly presence of this nuclear power station is the biggest environmental problem that Lemoiz has had to deal with, it is unfortunately not the only one. The hinterland of Basordas has also been transformed by the huge monoculture plantations of eucalyptus trees and fields of invasive pampas grass. The village also has been the unfortunate host to a landfill which, although inactive, looks as if it could well be opened again, to help “solve” the problem of Bizkaia`s problem of increasing waste. Periodically in the last few years it has received waste from other land-fills and there`s always the worry that it could be opened again. Beside the official landfill site Lemoiz has also been the illegal host to enormous quantities of lindane toxic waste which was illegally dumped there in the 1980s. Despite knowing about this for years the authorities have so far done nothing and it only thanks to Ekologistak Martxan exposing it that Mungia Town-Hall (the land-fill area used to belong to Mungia) the Basque Government have been forced to take action about something which they have known about for a long time.
But the inhabitants of Lemoiz are not resigned to accepting this legacy and recently a group of them formed the group Lemoiz Natura to do what they can to restore Lemoiz to its natural beauty and report any risks to the environment. Another objective is to make people aware of the need to protect our biodiversity, and more in particular native trees, flowers and plants, birds, insects, the streams, shore and sea. In fact, one of the first actions that Lemoiz Natura has planned is the cleaning of one of the streams which has been polluted by waste plastic from the landfill. They also hope to take part in various citizen science programmes to increase their knowledge of nature and foment the need to protect it. Naturally BBT will do all it can to help them with this and we wish them the best of luck.
Eucalyptus plantation in Lemoiz 
Boxes of soil samples abandoned by the environmental group Lurgintza 
Shameful negliglence but it`s almost the norm 
The Jata landfill site in Lemoiz 
Look yes, but look carefully what`s behind the signpost! 
Say no more! 
The port of Armintza 
The sad legacy of the nuclear power station 
Are they growing pampa here? 
There are still some beautiful traces of the native wood in Lemoiz