Starting this Saturday, livestock farms located in the basin facing the Mar Menor face a new inspection plan to verify that they comply with the regional law that protects the lagoon. The Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock will review 360 farms, mostly pigs, between 2024, 2025 and 2026 to certify that slurry and manure do not contaminate the marine ecosystem or the aquifers of the Campo de Cartagena region. This three-year measure included in environmental legislation has allowed sanctioning proceedings to be opened against 90 farms in the last two years for irregularities, which has so far led to a global fine of 50,000 euros.
The inspections will be carried out by both the Livestock technicians and the Regional Agrarian Offices (OCA) and will focus, above all, on the municipality of Fuente Álamo, where 240 farms will be visited. To a lesser extent, Cartagena will have 54 controls, Torre Pacheco with 32, Murcia with 30 and Mazarrón with four. Along with official inspections, technicians may carry out extraordinary reviews motivated by complaints from individuals or organizations, or by indication of other institutions such as the Segura Hydrographic Confederation, which also controls this type of activity in the basin.
The visits will focus on controlling, first of all, those farms that have not been inspected until now or whose owners have not presented documentation proving that they have waterproofed the slurry ponds, essential to prevent the infiltration of livestock nitrates into the subsoil. Another line of research will focus on checking whether farmers have recorded the volume of manure that they have moved to an authorized treatment center. Farms that keep more animals than allowed or that were filed in previous years for not complying with the law will also be visited.
Veterinary inspectors
The technicians of the General Subdirectorate of Sustainable Livestock Production will be in charge of participating in these control tasks, but, as a novelty, the Ministry includes in the surveillance the veterinary inspectors of the OCA, who will be able to draw up minutes to subsequently open a sanctioning file. in case of irregularities, according to the order published this Saturday in the Official Gazette of the Region (BORM).
Among the most common infractions found so far are not communicating slurry movements to the electronic registry of livestock manure movements (Remodega) or not reporting and not proving, through a subsoil study, the natural impermeability of the manure storage systems. on livestock farms.
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