Tragsa is already undertaking maintenance works in the bay to avoid heavy metal contamination in the Mediterranean
The procedure for hiring technical advice to prepare the new regeneration project for the Bay of Portmán suffers a new delay. According to sources from the Ministry, the tender for this contest, which the Secretary of State for the Environment, Hugo Morán, had announced would take place in mid-December, is going to be delayed for several weeks because the State Attorney has not yet given the approval. good to the specifications.
The Ministry does not want new surprises, after Morán himself transferred to the monitoring commission in November (although he had already informed this wording in October) that technical assistance would have to be tendered again because the Administrative Court Central de Recursos Contractuales (Tacrc) agreed with a company that detected formal defects in the specifications, whose procedure was already in the final phase, only in the absence of signing the contract with the successful bidder. For this reason, the text, until it passes the filter of the State Bar, will not have the approval for its publication in the BOE. But apart from the changes in the administrative specifications, the Ministry also raises modifications in the technical specifications to satisfy one of the latest demands agreed with the City Council of La Unión and the neighborhood groups within the project monitoring commission, which is to increase the amount of wastewater to be dredged from the bay in order to bring the coastline as close as possible to the original from 1957, when the spills began.
Once the procedure is published, interested consulting companies will have one month to submit offers and, since then, the Ministry estimates “an award period of around four months.”
Meanwhile, the semi-public company Tragsa, commissioned by the Ministry, has begun maintenance work around the bay, to prevent the deterioration of the works that were paralyzed in 2019 causing a flow to the Mediterranean of the heavy metals contained in the bay.
To do this, it is reinforcing the separation dam between the interior water of the lagoon that has formed in the central area of the bay and the sea. This wall, about a kilometer long, with the beating of the waves, has been eroded and in some sections, destroyed. Likewise, Tragsa will repair the perimeter fencing of the works in the coming weeks.
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