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Date Published: 06/09/2022

ARCHIVED - Three years and 20 million euros to save the Mar Menor

ARCHIVED ARTICLE

Towns around the Mar Menor are being given massive grants and a 3-year deadline to reduce sewage runoff into the protected lagoon.

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - Three years and 20 million euros to save the Mar Menor

This Tuesday, September 6, the Spanish Government is approving a grant of 20 million euros that will go to the municipalities bordering the Mar Menor to be invested in the improvement of sewage networks and in the treatment of waste water in a bid to stop contamination in the saltwater lagoon.

Delivered as part of the the Ministry for Ecological Transition’s roadmap for the recovery of the Mar Menor, this money will be split among the main towns and cities of the Mar Menor “to reduce pollution and nutrient discharges into the lagoon as much as possible, regardless of their source”.

See also: Huge improvement in Mar Menor water quality, according to official sources

San Javier and Los Alcázares will receive 3.75 million euros each, while Cartagena and San Pedro del Pinatar will get 3.5 million. Fuente Álamo and Torre Pacheco will receive 1.5 million euros, while La Unión will get 1 million.

These areas, in particular, according to Ministry sources, “present significant problems in the daily management of their sewage networks, which increase on rainy days and, even more so, during episodes of heavy rainfall.”

Each of these municipalities is being given a general execution period of 36 months, or three years, to spend this money on making the necessary changes to their sewers and water treatment services, including improving and building new sewer systems.

The Ministry has also recommended that they spend the money on improvements in the purification treatments of their waste water and carrying out mapping projects, inspections, modelling and monitoring of existing sewerage systems.

Farmers banned from watering their crops

Meanwhile, the Confederación Hidrográfica del Segura (CHS), which monitors and controls water usage in the area, has given 3,000 farmers around the Mar Menor until this Thursday, September 8, to prove that they are complying satisfactorily with the precautionary restrictions in areas where the subsoil is contaminated by agricultural nitrates.

However, due to the complexity of proving this and the relatively short window of time the CHS has allowed before the deadline, the huge influx of reports are overwhelming the technicians and laboratories charged with assessing them.

This Monday morning alone, the Irrigation Community received a total of 1,000 files, all of them from community members affected by these measures.

The rules to attempt to stem the flow of nitrate-laden irrigation water from polluting the Mar Menor were approved more than two years ago and affect almost 30,000 plots of agricultural land in the region, much of which is used for growing fruit and vegetables.

Now read: Why is it so difficult to solve the current problems in the Mar Menor?

Image: CARM