The Ministry for Ecological Transition has once again ruled out the Autonomous Community’s proposal to discharge the Mar Menor aquifer and divert the nutrient-laden waters from the Albujón boulevard to the north collector, to reduce contamination of the lagoon. This has been communicated by the Secretary of State for the Environment, Hugo Morán, to the Minister for the Environment, Mar Menor, Universities and Research, Juan María Vázquez, who has urged to act on what he defends as the origin of the problem: the agricultural and urban discharges.
«What is evident, and irrefutable, is that these flows are not generated spontaneously in the Albujón boulevard, but rather, according to all the data we handle, they come mainly from the contributions that reach the Hydraulic Public Domain either due to discharges , which may be legal, as is the case of the Torre Pacheco treatment plant; through Canal D7, which collects drainage from agricultural activity from Campo de Cartagena; or directly from the overflow of the aquifer, “explains Morán in a letter sent to Vázquez.
In the letter, dated in Madrid on April 25 and with which he responds to a preview of the 12th of the regional councilor to the minister and third vice president of the Government of Pedro Sánchez, Teresa Ribera, Morán points out that the state of this body of water It has forced the central government to declare it “at risk of not reaching good chemical status.” And, in addition to defending the “intense work” of his department on this underground mass, “which will culminate in the approval of an appropriate action program”, he urges the Community to “reduce contributions” to the hydraulic and maritime public domain- terrestrial “derived from agricultural and urban activities, fundamentally”.
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Specifically, it demands that the regional Administration exercise its “exclusive powers” in these areas and in designing “a land management of the catchment basin compatible with the adequate ecological state of the lagoon.”
Rejects the north collector, so as not to “transfer spills or contamination” to the Mediterranean and because of the “very high” costs; and urges the Community to exercise its “exclusive powers in agriculture, urban planning and spatial planning
Without citing it by that name, Morán refers to the northern collector, which would evacuate the waters to the Mediterranean, after denitrification and desalination treatment. And it flatly rejects this technical solution, which recently generated a confrontation between the regional government of Fernando López Miras, managed by the PP, and the Ministry, of the PSOE, due to the decision of the latter to refer the 54 million to the Guadalquivir basin. of euros planned for this lagoon sanitation infrastructure.
State investment of 500 million
“This Ministry is not in favor of focusing solutions as a priority on ‘discharging the groundwater table and establishing a network of infrastructures that allow the management and treatment of the water that is used and generated in the drainage basin'”, warns Morán , who quotes the counselor’s request verbatim. The Secretary of State shows the central government’s opposition to “the end-of-pipe infrastructures that were included in the Zero Discharge Plan”, replaced by the Ribera team by the Framework of Priority Actions for the recovery of the Mar Menor.
This, Morán points out, is endowed with 500 million euros, and adds that, according to “numerous reports”, such as that of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Mar Menor (auxiliary body of the Community) of February 2017, “the appropriate thing is act at the source of the problem, and not transfer spills or contamination to other areas”. Nor should “very high costs for public coffers” be generated in investment and maintenance, he maintains. These effects, he affirms, would be “hardly justifiable for the receiving populations and ecosystems: the Mediterranean façade in front of the population centers of El Mojón, in San Pedro del Pintar, and La Torre, in Pilar de la Horadada”; and “the maritime spaces of the Natura 2000 Network”, including the seagrass meadows.
“Buffer effect”
In short, the Ministry is committed, “whenever possible”, to “apply solutions based on nature, such as the belt and green corridors that we are designing and executing around the lagoon”. All this, to “eliminate the direct effects and seek a buffer or shock-absorbing effect, as well as the renaturation of the immediate environment.”
Ribera’s ‘number 2’ also reminds Vázquez that it is not necessary to act only on the Albujón boulevard, but also to “work to reduce the contributions” of the “contamination that comes from the Sierra Minera de Cartagena-La Unón.” And he argues it in the “ecological damage produced in the south of the lagoon, which is associated with a serious risk to public health.”
“Eager” to see each other’s faces
In short, in the face of this set of problems, which he links to “decades of inaction” (whose managers he omits), Morán urges the counselor to “formalize and establish the Inter-Administrative Commission of the Mar Menor, provided for in article 5 of Law 3/ 2020, of July 27, for the recovery and protection of the Mar Menor». In this body, the Ministry, which those responsible for the Ecological Transition are “eager” to activate, the Government will be able to “learn what progress is being made from your regional Administration,” Morán points out. And he admits that “it is clear that the three administrations involved must achieve coordination and complementarity of our actions.” Likewise, Morán proposes to Vázques to hold a meeting on May 5 to share these issues.
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