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Date Published: 20/05/2020

ARCHIVED - CHS begins to pump water out of the Rambla del Albujón and away from the Mar Menor

ARCHIVED ARTICLE

In the first week the equivalent of 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools was prevented from reaching the Mar Menor

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - CHS begins to pump water out of the Rambla del Albujón and away from the Mar Menor

As temperatures increase, anxious eyes are watching the gradual growth of green algae on the shallow fringes of the lagoon.

It has been calculated that the Rambla del Albujón, which flows down into the Mar Menor discharges more than five million cubic meters of water per year into the lagoon and the CHS, which has responsibility for the infrastructure, has been under considerable pressure to reduce this flow of nitrate laden water, which is a significant contributing factor to the problems of eutrophication experienced by the lagoon three years ago and which now threatens to return in some measure during the forthcoming summer following the significant floods of the last few months.

Last week the CHS re-activated the Albujón pumping plant in what it calls a “testing phase”, removing water from the rambla and re-distributing it back to the farmers forming part of the authorised network of irrigators, mixed with water received from the Tajo-Segura Trasvase and water generated from the legal desalination plants.

The CHS accepts that the start-up will be "gradual", operating a few hours a day whilst checking "that everything is going correctly" and it is anticipated that the volume of water removed from the rambla will increase once the plant enters full operation.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Environment has welcomed resumption of the water pumping, stating that it has been pressuring the CHS to reactivate the infrastructure since it was stopped a year ago.” The cause-effect relationship between the stoppage of pumping in 2019 and the worsening of the parameters has been evident and verifiable,“ they said, referring to the renewed algal activity currently visible in some corners of the Mar Menor, such as that in San Pedro del Pinatar.

This is just one part of the wider problems experienced by the Mar Menor due to the nitrates used by agriculturalists in the Campo de Cartagena surrounding the largest salt water lake in Europe.

More than a hundred agricultural companies and farmers from the Campo de Cartagena area are being investigated by the Murcian courts, suspected of having contributed to the degradation of the Mar Menor through the illegal use of clandestine desalination plants and wells installed in agricultural farms, extracting water illegally from the aquifer below the campo de Cartagena, treating it to remove sufficient salt so that it could be used for irrigation, after which the brackish residual waste generated was dumped back into the aquifer or directly into the Rambla del Albujón and on into the Mar Menor.

The resulting “clean” water was enriched with nitrate fertilisers, used to irrigate crops and leeched into the soil. Excess water drained off into the surrounding ditches and when it rained nitrates and run-off water ran down into the Mar Menor, the levels of nitrates growing to such an extent that the resulting algal bloom changed the constitution of the Mar Menor three years ago.

Water still continues to run-off into the rambla throughout the year, and after episodes of heavy rain can continue to leech through the soil and into the networks of ditches and water run-offs surrounding the lagoon for months afterwards, much of it reaching the lagoon through the rambla del Albujón.

Part of this text has been extracted from the special report published in the Murcia Today weekly news round-up on Friday examining the latest news relating to the Mar Menor. The full report can be seen on the latest Murcia Today Bulletin. Click here

Join the Mar Menor group on Facebook for info about Los Alcázares, San Javier, San Pedro del Pinatar, Torre Pacheco, La Unión and Cartagena and keep up to date with all the latest news and events in the Mar Menor: https://www.facebook.com/groups/MarMenorNewsAndEvents/