Date Published: 03/11/2020
ARCHIVED - Fertilizer ban within 1500 metres of the Mar Menor comes into effect
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
The green belt around the lagoon is made three times wider as of this week
It is understandable that the issue of the marine environment of the Mar Menor, while not being forgotten, has for many people been relegated to being of secondary importance during the current Covid pandemic, but this Monday was a red-letter day for the lagoon as new legislation restricting farming practices close to the shore came into force.
Despite having been passed in July it was not until Monday 2nd November that the “Ley del Mar Menor” took effect, banning the use of fertilizers within 1,500 metres of the coast of Europe’s largest saltwater lagoon. Within this “green belt” only ecological and sustainable agriculture is now permitted, the intention being to reduce the amount of nutrients and other material washed into the Mar Menor by floodwater and natural drainage from the farmland of the Campo de Cartagena.
This in turn, the theory runs, will help to prevent the proliferation of the “algal bloom” which turned the water of the lagoon a greenish colour in 2016 and which has threatened to return on numerous occasions since, particularly after the torrential storms which flooded the area in late 2019 and early 2020. Ever since the episode of 2016 the need for legislation to protect the Mar Menor has been agreed on, but the details of this legislation have been fiercely disputed by the different parties involved including political parties, water infrastructure authorities, crop farmers and other agriculturalists, biologists, fishermen and a host of others.
In this context it was not until December last year that the regional government of Murcia finally passed its Mar Menor legislation, banning fertilizers from all areas within 500 metres of the shoreline, and now that fertilizer-free fringe has been made three times wider under the terms of the law which was passed in July.
Other measures are being introduced gradually according to timeframes specified in the legislation, and this week also marks the introduction of one which specifies that no more than 170 kilos of nitrogen per hectare per year can be used within the 1,500-metre limit. At the same time a 3-year ban is in force on the installation of new greenhouses and the opening of new livestock farming concerns in an effort to slow the growth of a sector which everyone recognizes has, in the long term, been detrimental to water quality in the Mar Menor.
Similarly, no new building projects are to be allowed during the same 3-year period, and by the end of this year limits on crop rotation will come into force.
This summer the lagoon narrowly escaped predicted disaster and the algal bloom many thought would return across the whole of the Mar Menor was held at bay. This is mainly believed to be due to the flow of water from the Mediterranean after golas in the far north of the lagoon were dredged and widened.