ARCHIVED - Portmán regeneration project still on course to get under way early in 2016

The contract to regenerate the bay in La Unión will be awarded by the end of 2015

Pablo Saavedra, the Secretary of State for the Environment, visited the bay of Portmán in La Unión on Tuesday and confirmed that the contract to carry out regeneration work on the area affected by contaminated landfill will be awarded by the end of 2015. Following this the regeneration will begin with immediate effect. 

Sr Saavedra was accompanied during his visit by Francisco Bernabé, the minister for Development and Infrastructures in the regional government of Murcia. Sr Bernabé is also a former Mayor of La Unión, and was the main driving force in getting the Portmán regeneration project off the ground. 

A total of 13 companies have submitted bids in the process to re-adjudicate the contract to regenerate Portmán Bay, and the technical characteristics of these bids are now being scrutinized before the financial side of the proposals is examined in November and the contract is awarded before the end of December. 

Plans to regenerate the bay have been proposed for many years since it was almost entirely filled in with waste in the form of steriles from the open-cast mining operations which were carried out in the Sierra Minera between 1957 and 1987. The chief cause of the pollution, the Lavadero Roberto mineral treatment and washing site, still stands as a monument to the shocking lack of interest in ecological protection on the outskirts of the village of Portmán in the mid-20th century.

At first the amount of steriles dumped in the bay was reported to be approximately 3,000 tons per year, but by 1968 operations had escalated, and in the end estimates vary from 70 million to 315 million tons of waste dumped. This formed a huge and unwanted toxic landfill, leaving vast areas of the seafloor covered up to a depth of 150 metres in places.

In January 1958 the government licenced dumping in the Mediterranean to take place for a period of five years as long as it was done at least 400 metres from the coastbut in 1961 the minimum distance from the shore was reduced to 250 metres and by 1969 all restrictions were lifted. As a result, by the time dumping stopped at the end of the 1980’s, the shoreline had advanced by 550 metres and the bay was plugged solid with sterile waste.

Since then all attempts to regenerate the bay and breathe new life into Portmán have been thwarted, mainly due to the high costs involved. Now, however, the technology available permits those removing the waste to recycle and extract the remaining ores from the mineral residue, at least partially offsetting the costs involved. 

The Department of the Environment hopes to recover 250 metres of beach by removing the mineral waste, which is to be dumped in the Corta Minera de San José, a vast open-cast mining pit in the mountains of the Sierra Minera behind the village. The beach itself will be regenerated for public use and new area opened up to extend the tourism options for the municipality, adding a new marina and sporting port to the facilities available now.

The project is valued at 59.5 million euros, and is to be carried out within a time limit of 46 months, after which Sr Bernabé is confident that the completion of the longest-running strategic aim of the regional government will bring “wealth, prosperity and the creation of many jobs”. 

Click for a full history of the ecological disaster of Portmán Bay.