Date Published: 17/12/2019
ARCHIVED - Vox advocates dredging the channels between the Mar Menor and the Mediterranean
ARCHIVED ARTICLE 
The proposal meets strong criticism from scientists and ecologists
As different groups put forward a variety of measures in order to protect and regenerate the marine environment of the Mar Menor the far-right wing political party Vox has thrown its hat into the ring with a suggestion that the situation could be improved by widening the “golas”, or channels through which water flows between the lagoon and the Mediterranean.
In the general election on 10th November Vox polled more votes in the Region of Murcia than any other party, but until now the group has remained relatively quiet on the issue of the Mar Menor, despite the growing public outcry over the failure to protect it in recent decades. On Monday, though, they registered a proposal in Congress which they say would improve the condition of the lagoon, and at the same time party spokesman Iván Espinosa de los Monteros criticized the “uselessness” of climate summits like the one which concluded last week in Madrid and the “criminalization” of crop farmers in the Campo de Cartagena, whose activities are generally held to be largely responsible for the deterioration in water quality in the Mar Menor.
In order to combine the preservation of nature with agricultural, cattle farming and industrial activity, Vox advocate not only the widening of the “golas”, but also the construction of water treatment infrastructures to cleanse runoff water of potentially harmful substances before it reaches the lagoon, a purification system to treat water running off from farmland and a drainage system to allow agriculture to continue as it is while re-directing water containing fertilizers elsewhere. This last infrastructure would consist of a large ditch, 6 metres deep and two metres wide.
The reaction to these proposals has been mixed, to say the least. The idea of widening the golas is one which has been put forward before, but ecologists are quick to point out that in terms of preserving the “unique” eco-system of the Mar Menor this would be disastrously counter-productive. One of the chief characteristics of the lagoon is its high salinity, which would be destroyed if the narrow channels connecting it with the Mediterranean were to be enlarged.

This point of view was aired loudly two years ago when the Murcia government announced the partial dredging of the Gola de Marchamalo, although at the time Javier Celdrán, who headed the department of the Environment at the time, stated that the decision had been made after weighing up advice offered by members of the scientific committee overseeing measures to regenerate and protect the marine environment of the Mar Menor. He added that the program would merely rectify a situation which had come about because at Las Encañizadas some 35 hectares of land had emerged from the sea in recent years, and that the breadth of the channels through which water flows had been reduced from 580 metres to 105 metres since 2009.
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