The invitation that the head of the Court of Instruction 4 of Cartagena, Raúl Sánchez Conesa, made to public administrations and environmental groups to defend the rights of the Mar Menor in three consecutive criminal cases against agricultural and mining companies for the pollution of the lagoon has had its first major effect.
As a private accusation, under the law of legal personality of the lagoon and its basin, the City Council of Los Alcázares requested to open an oral trial against Explotaciones, plantaciones y irrigations Agricultural del Campo de Cartagena SL (Expracar). It accuses him of an alleged crime against the environment for carrying out “discharges of brine rejection, with a high nitrate content, produced in clandestine desalination plants”, and thereby causing a “danger” of “imbalance of the ecosystem.”
The City Council, which uses an expert report from the Institute of Legal Medicine of Valencia, indicates that between 2014 and 2016 there was a spill of 136,363 cubic meters into the Miranda Rambla, through a brine pipeline. This was built by the Segura Hydrographic Confederation, an agency of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition that dismantled it in 2017.
In a letter addressed to the court, which investigates two pieces of the ‘Topillo case’, the City Council demands that Exracar be fined 888,803 euros and suspend its activity for 3 years. The corporation led by Mayor Mario Pérez Cervera, of the PSOE, also requests a bond of 444,401 euros and to calculate the damage to the soil, water, flora, fauna and protected habitats, according to the Environmental Responsibility Law.
The Prosecutor’s Office requests the file
The Prosecutor’s Office refuses to request civil liability for the company, whose sole administrator, Mariano Roca Meroño, died in 2022. Sources from the Public Ministry indicated to LA VERDAD that it is a family-run SME. The prosecutor supported the company’s request to file the case. He sees no indication that those investigated [un hijo y un sobrino de Roca] “knew or participated in the decisions related to the operation of the desalination plants.”
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