Date Published: 24/11/2020
ARCHIVED - Work begins on bathing platforms for Los Urrutias, Punta Brava and Estrella de Mar
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
Three further platforms are planned for Los Nietos and Los Alcázares and Cartagena will re-use the metal platforms used for such a short period of time this summer
Work began on Monday to install five permanent bathing platforms in the Mar Menor ready for next summer, the locations chosen being Los Urrutias, Punta Brava and Estrella de Mar.
Three further platforms are planned; two for Los Nietos and one for the Playa Carrión in Los Alcázares which are currently undergoing the necessary bureaucratic process to license them.
The project will cost 1.2 million euros and is being financed by the regional government with the work expected to be completed by February 2021.
According to the design, five arms will extend out from an access platform, giving an area of more than 600 m2 each, of which, around 50 m2 will be used for shade areas. The balnearios are sustainable and integrated into the lagoon ecology; They will be supported on 179 wooden piles of 140 centimeters in diameter protected by concrete liners that facilitate the transit of water, avoiding the accumulation of sludge.
These replace the temporary metal structures which were put in place for just a few weeks this year in an attempt to limit complaints about the conditions facing bathers in a corner of the Mar Menor particularly prone to accumulations of mud and silt deposits. This year there was widespread expectation that significant algal growth could make bathing in these areas difficult, but as it turned out, the combination of a worldwide coronavirus pandemic and the resulting movement limitations which limited visitor numbers, as well as the opening of a water channel in the north of the lagoon, helped to keep both visitor numbers and the algal growth to a minimum.
There was fierce criticism about the amount of money spent on the temporary structures which were used by so few people for such a short period of time.
Cartagena town hall itself however, intends to re-use the temporary structures and increase their number to five, which will be installed on Cartagena beaches next summer.
But neither the bathing platforms nor temporary walkways are a definitive solution for the problem of silt and mud accumulations suffered by residents and visitors to this area of the Mar Menor which have required their construction in the first place.
This problem has been steadily worsening for years and the arguments between Cartagena town hall, the regional government and the Spanish national government about who is responsible for removing the accumulated silt every year have been ongoing for so long that the topic has simply become boring.
The national government insists that the council should remove deposits from the shoreline of their beaches, and the councils insist the national government should do it; the rows over who should removes silt and mud from shallow areas of shoreline and who should clean mud and algal deposits from the beach itself repeated time after time after time.
This year Cartagena council made a lot of noise about the topic, but as usual, it’s just a load of hot political waffle and in spite of insisting that the council would have to do the work itself, the Mayoress has now returned to her endless insistences that the national government should do it.
In reality, she has more than sufficient money in her budgets to just get on with the job and make the beaches in her municipality attractive for visitors, but is determined to spend years arguing about the subject rather than actually doing something about it, much to the frustration of residents who have listened to the rhetoric ad nauseum for the last few years.
At least the bathing platforms enable bathers to reach areas of clear water away from the mud and silt deposits which make entering the water so unpleasant in this specific corner, and will look attractive, but no-one is under any illusions that this is not a proper solution to the problem and is anything other than expensive window dressing.