The Platform for People Affected by Heavy Metals calls for the construction of a stormwater interceptor by the Cartagena City Council, they demand the sealing of the land and warn about the arrival of waste around the school, the boulevards and the Mar Menor
“A red river of acid waters.” This is what the residents of Llano del Beal, in the municipality of Cartagena, call the trail that invaded the town on Wednesday morning as a result of dragging mining waste after the heavy rains of recent days. The Platform of People Affected by Heavy Metals of the Sierra Minera de Cartagena and the Union denounced this new discharge through a video and photographs of different streets of the town, which after crossing several streets ends up in the Ponce boulevard that ends in the Mar Menor. And they demanded that the public administrations, the Prosecutor’s Office and the courts take measures “at once” to investigate the origin of the waste and put an end to this problem due to the risks that non-waterproofed toxic and dangerous waste pose to the health of people and for the environment.
Residents point to a plot located in the center of the town as one of the exit points for polluting materials. And they denounced that in recent days there were similar episodes that affected the surroundings of the San Ginés de la Jara public school. Faced with this last situation and the delay in the decontamination of the San Agustín raft, whose ownership is divided between the Cartagena City Council and the Portmán Golf company, the citizen platform presented a letter to the Investigating Court 2 of Cartagena to demand that it reactivate, after three years, the investigation for an alleged crime against the environment.
This group, whose spokesperson is Juan Ortuño, lamented the “passivity” of the Prosecutor’s Office when requesting the corresponding procedural impulse to carry out proceedings. He also demanded that the owners of the San Agustín raft act immediately and that the Cartagena City Council, through the water service concessionaire, Hidrogea, immediately begin the construction of a rainwater interceptor to prevent the dragging of « acidic waters, which cause a deterioration by corrosion of the streets and other infrastructures and pass next to the houses».
Sources from the local government team indicated that they are still waiting for the Ministry of the Environment of the Autonomous Community and the Railway Infrastructure Administrator (Adif) of the Ministry of Transport to grant authorization to start work on the part of the San Agustín raft. corresponding to the municipality. Regarding the private part of the plot, Environment sources indicated that the file is still being processed, to respond to the allegations of the Portmán Golf company. This rejects having obligations to restore its land, since it was not the cause of the contamination and who deposited waste on the land. Other companies did it in the past, before the change of ownership of the land.
Raft Jenny
The neighbors cried out for solutions in the surroundings of this town in the Sierra Minera and lamented that, a few meters from the houses, there are still no solutions for sealing the site of the old Jenny Balsa, where also due to the rains it continues to pour of mining waste towards a ravine that flows into the Mar Menor. The plot belongs to the Autonomous Community and the Ministry of the Environment unsuccessfully tried to get the remainder of the definitive closure and restoration to be assumed by the Ministry for the Ecological Transition within its recovery plan for the Laguna Salada basin. The situation of this last piece of land is being investigated by the Nature Protection Service of the Civil Guard (Seprona) and by the Court of Instruction 4 of Cartagena.
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