The total protection of the western area of the municipality against mining operations such as those that the company Cemex intends to create has now become the main objective for the mayoress of Cartagena, Noelia Arroyo. The Mexican company obtained permission from the Autonomous Community to carry out tastings and assess the feasibility of creating a quarry from which to extract pozzolan. “Environmental values and the effects on rural areas advise extending protection against mining exploitation to the entire area of the west of Cartagena,” said the councilor on Monday. That is why she announced that in the new Urban Plan she will “shield” the entire area proposed for tastings, with protection that prevents the opening of mines.
Arroyo requested reports from the municipal Urban Planning and Environment services last week on the regulatory situation of the land on which the mining company requested prospecting permits. The analysis of the municipal technicians clearly concludes that a surface close to 80% of the affected area is protected by the General Urban Planning Plan in force, that of 1987.
The report also indicates that the remaining 20% of the land would be affected due to its proximity to population centers and areas of ecological value. For these reasons, the councilor added, “I am going to propose extending the protection to one hundred percent of that area of the western part of the municipality in the new urban plan that we are reviewing.”
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He believes that it is a decision “that is not adapted on a whim”, but rather “is perfectly motivated”. «It makes no sense to speculate with the opening of mines in an area that is already protected and that it will be fully protected as soon as we approve the new Urban Plan. And the best thing is that all parties, both the neighbors and the promoters of these farms, know that this is our intention, “he warned.
In Review
The defense will form part of the novelties of the General Plan, which will be approved once the review that is in progress is completed. In this sense, the mayoress concluded that she expects the support of the rest of the groups for this decision of the municipal government.
In this sense, the Association of Naturalists of the Southeast (ANSE) assured that seven of the ten tastings planned in the project are located on land classified as Non-Developable Agricultural (NUA). For this reason, “extractive activities could not be carried out, unless the regulations were modified.” And it is that the current Cartagena Urban Planning Plan includes among the activities expressly prohibited in this type of soil “extractive ones”, recalled ANSE.
The other three proposed zones are located in potential areas for the reintroduction of the Tallante garbancillo, and excessively close to the Protected Area, ZEPA and SCI of La Muela-Cabo Tiñoso, and the SCI Cabezos del Pericón. For this reason, the association considers that Cemex “is obliged to request authorization for the development of research work from the Cartagena City Council, and this should deny it, taking into account that extractive activities could not be developed in the proposed area.”
It will require canceling the permissions
The environmental association sent this Monday several letters to the mayoress of Cartagena, Noelia Arroyo, and to the General Directorate of Industrial and Mining Activity asking that the permits granted to Cemex be canceled for being contrary to current regulations. Even so, in a note, this group expressed its fear of the possibility that “the new General Plan for Urban Planning could reduce the protection that the General Plan of 1987 proposed for this specific area, as happened with the General Plan of 2011 , which was annulled by the courts.
It also calls for responsibility from the municipal government and the opposition political groups so that the new urban planning “does not reduce the protection of the area”, and “avoids” that new threats “end up degrading a landscape that has already suffered a strong impact due to the construction of infrastructures, such as the Cartagena-Vera toll highway, the N-332 bypass, and the proliferation of illegal warehouses and homes that are deteriorating a landscape of great singularity”.
ANSE considers that, in addition to the values associated with the protected space of La Muela-Cabo Tiñoso and the SCI Cabezos del Pericón and its biodiversity, land use planning figures should be sought that guarantee the conservation of wooded drylands and their threatened wild flora, among the one that emphasizes the chickpea of Tallante and the jujube -an olive-, and the unique volcanic geology and its ethnographic heritage.
For its part, the political party Sí Cartagena will demand that the Autonomous Community be urged to declare the area a protected area under article 35.1 of Law 42/2007, of December 13, on Natural Heritage and Biodiversity west.
MC and the company
In this same sense, the MC spokesman, Jesús Giménez Gallo, yesterday asked the representatives of the Cemex company to suspend the mining extraction tastings in the western area of the municipality. He did it in a meeting that he held with them. “The pozzolana mine and Cemex have been in process for years, thus demonstrating the double standards of Noelia Arroyo,” he explained.
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The Community says that the project conforms to the legal requirements
The General Directorate of Energy and Industrial and Mining Activity assured this Monday that in accordance with the Mining Law the project presented by the company of Mexican origin Cemex to carry out tastings in the western zone to extract pozzolana “adjusts to the legal requirements, including the environmental ones”. That regional department added that in the event that this research project needs a license to act in a specific area, “it must be the municipality’s City Council that grants it or not, based on its Urban Plan.” And he ended by saying that the Community “only pronounces on issues related to the investigation of mineral resources that may exist.”
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A group of neighbors creates a platform to fight against the intentions of the Mexican firm
A group of residents from the western zone, advised by the well-known ecologist Pedro Costa Morata and the environmental lawyer Pedro Macanás, have created a platform to fight against the claims of the Mexican company Cemex to build an open pit mine in the west of Cartagena . After several meetings held throughout the month of August, its members have requested a three-party meeting between them, the General Directorate of Energy and Industrial and Mining Activity of the Autonomous Community and the multinational that intends to carry out the tastings to study the possibility to extract pozzolan. It is called the West Region Platform of Cartagena. “We believed that the need to create a pressure group had to be transmitted among the residents of the western zone and that is why we formed this group,” Professor Pedro Costa explained to LA VERDAD.
The one who did meet this Monday with Cemex, in addition to the spokesman for MC Cartagena, Jesús Giménez, was the president of the Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Cartagena, Tomás Sánchez. In the meeting, Sánchez showed his refusal to allow the company to do the tastings. Moments before, he expressed his satisfaction with the decision made in the morning by Mayor Noelia Arroyo, the result, he assured, of the work “of all the residents of the western zone.”
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