ARCHIVED - Minister open to purchase of land to create enforced green strip around the Mar Menor

She believes that short-term solutions are not the answer and says her priority is to act at the origin of the problem

For the last week and a half the Mar Menor has been a focal point of attention for the Spanish media, but for all the wrong reasons, with more than five tons of dead fish washed up around its southern beaches due to an episode of anoxia (lack of oxygen in the water caused by rotting marine grasses)in the lagoon.

The images of fish gasping for breath in the shallows before appearing dead on the surface have angered millions and created a week of high political tension between the local, regional and national governments, who have clashed with angry residents and environmental groups as each sought to blame the crisis on another, but following a visit by the national government

Minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, third vice president of the national government, the tension has eased a little as regional and national governments agree to work together to find mechanisms by which the short and long-term issues can be resolved.

The Minister met with mayors, environmental and neighborhood organizations and the regional premier in order to assess the actions that the lagoon needs to recover, taking into consideration the input from the scientific community.

The Minister said virtually nothing about the short-term actions proposed by the regional government, but focused on her priority which is to deal with the origin of the problem, principal amongst which is contamination by agricultural nitrates leaching from the quaternary aquifer of the Campo de Cartagena and the Mar Menor, and running into the lagoon via water run-off following irrigation or rainfall.

The Minister was adamant that the “Zero Dumping plan” (Plan de Vertido 0), originally approved during the last legislature of the Popular Party when it held power in the central Government is “pharaonic” and “out of date” and although the regional PP government continues to call for the implementation of the measures approved, she believes that this plan should be shelved completely and a new model of management adopted which would deal with the core issues of the problem rather than attempting to solve them with major engineering projects.

Her proposal is that the agricultural sector must be stopped from continuing to farm in the most vulnerable area close to the lagoon and she discussed the enforced purchase of agricultural land in order to prevent any agricultural activity, together with a compensatory payments plan for the farmers who will be prevented from farming, but will instead focus their efforts on creating a sustainable green belt around the lagoon to absorb run-off water and totally change the model of land management currently employed.

She accepts that the aquifer needs to be better managed, but opposes the emergency actions proposed by the Murcian regional government which include pumping water out of the aquifer in order to lower the water table: "scientists say that pumping out the water does not make sense," she commented, adding that the aquifer should be allowed to “settle down”and the principal aim was to ensure that it was not further contaminated with nitrates.

She plans for her Ministry to continue operating, and improve, the system which currently extracts water from the Rambla del Albujón to clean it and send it back to the agricultural sector inland for irrigation use ( a pumping system subjected to frequent mechanical breakdowns and with limited capacity) and intends to move ahead with plans for a desalination plant to process more of the water run-off.

She urged the regional government to speed-up the processes to prevent further agricultural activity in the affected zone and to rigidly enforce the decrees already existing and which the regional government aims to issue in the coming days (including a complete ban on the use of nitrates within zone 1), reminding the regional government that failure to enforce the orders and ensure compliance within the agricultural sector would adversely affect different economic sectors such as tourism and hospitality, as is occurring at the moment.

The Murcian regional president admits that there are currently 10 companies and individuals who must be sanctioned because they have been found guilty of committing damage to the environment through illegal water extraction, desalination and irrigation, and that, although today they are no longer undertaking this activity, they must still be sanctioned; the minister is urging the regional government to take action and sanction those concerned as to date, not a single sanction has been issued .

She insisted that the system has a “high regeneration capacity, but we must stop the flow of agricultural nitrates and water discharge”.

Next week a meeting is planned with representatives of the agricultural sector to address joint actions in the Campo de Cartagena and the Minister also promised to study the proposal of ecological groups that a state commission, in which representatives from the environmental groups and residents would also be invited to participate, be set up to control the lagoon's regeneration projects.

National and regional governments will meet more regularly to discuss pertinent issues, but it is hoped that some common ground may have been established to diffuse the current levels of tension.
Images; Visit of the Minister. Ayto-Los Alcázares

The problems facing the Mar Menor are very complex. CLICK HERE to find out more (full background doc. in English).