Minister Teresa Ribera announces in Murcia aid for small producers who transform their irrigation into sustainable crops
The transformation of agricultural holdings in the Mar Menor environment is moving towards sustainability, and in many cases with the collaboration of the farmers themselves, as confirmed this Friday in Murcia by the third vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge: 3,700 of the 5,500 hectares of illegal irrigation to which the water supply has already been cut off have voluntarily stopped cultivating.
Teresa Ribera provided this information during a joint appearance with the president of the Autonomous Community, Fernando López Miras, after the meeting they held at the new Mar Menor Office, which was inaugurated yesterday in the center of Murcia – Pinares street, parallel to Post Office Street.
These are the dependencies from where the actions to improve the lagoon and its sphere of influence that depend on the State will be processed, a set of projects encompassed in the so-called Framework of Priority Actions to Recover the Mar Menor in which the central Government has committed more than 500 million euros over the next few years. Staff from this office, Ribera said, will travel weekly to one of the municipalities affected by the environmental restoration actions.
Technicians from the Mar Menor Office, inaugurated this Friday, will travel every week to one of the affected municipalities
“It is important to work on the ground with the owners and farmers, who are part of the solution,” declared the minister, who hoped that during this year irrigation will be cut off to the other 3,000 hectares without water rights in the catchment area. to the lagoon that have been denounced. In total, the area put into production illegally amounts to 8,640 hectares.
The minister also recalled that so far 140 irregular wells have been closed and 250 desalination plants have been sealed -the devices, sometimes hidden in dumps, used to remove the brine from the water extracted from the aquifer with the aim of having a minimum quality for the irrigation.
Questioned about the appeal of the central government before the Constitutional Court due to differences in interpretation of the Law for the Protection and Conservation of the Mar Menor, regarding which administration should be responsible for the restitution of illegal irrigation to its original state, Teresa Ribera justified this appeal law in which “competencies are not clear and it is important to speed up as much as possible and be effective in the decisions that are made, although this disparity of criteria is common”. The head of the autonomous Executive, Fernando López Miras clarified in this regard that a commission has already been created between the central and regional governments to elucidate these administrative fringes.
Purchase of farms
The head of the Miteco also announced that her department will launch a line of economic aid for “small farmers” who are willing to transform their intensive crops into sustainable farms “that contribute to the recovery of the Mar Menor.”
The purchase of farms on the perimeter of the lagoon for the creation of a green belt with plant filters and wetlands that absorbs agricultural nitrates will, however, require something more than the will of the owners, “because land planning criteria come into play », Ribera admitted. For this reason, a “dialogue table with municipalities and landowners” has been set up.
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