The Mayor of Cartagena, Noelia Arroyo, has demanded before the MEPs who are visiting the Mar Menor specific actions for the removal of mud and dry, the main consequence that leaves the state of the Mar Menor on its beaches, in addition to demanding specific aid to the economic sectors most affected by the environmental crisis of the Mar Menor, which is also an economic crisis.
These requests have been made while participating in the meeting with the delegation of the European Parliament, which from today until Friday are making an information visit to the Mar Menor.
Arroyo has demanded solutions for the three phases of the problem that this ecosystem presents: the contamination of the aquifer from the surface; the contamination of the Mar Menor from the aquifer and the consequences of the contamination on the sea and the beaches.
In this sense, the mayoress assures that not only must action be taken to prevent the entry of more nutrients into an aquifer “which is already polluted and will remain so for years”, but she also calls for action to stop the entry of nitrates from the El Albujón watercourse through the water table, as well as to stop the consequences “that this pollution has on the beaches in the form of tons of biomass that are corrupted in front of the beaches and end up generating sludge”.
Faced with this problem, which the mayoress describes as structural, “the local councils feel alone”, and she described the enormous resources that Cartagena City Council allocates to the cleaning and removal of sludge, in the face of the inaction of the administrations “who have to do it but have decided to back out”, citing the imminent tender by the council for the sludge and dry waste removal project, which has funding from the Autonomous Community.
“We have to make efforts for which the local councils are not prepared and dedicate large sums of money to clean up a task that is not ours to do. We are even preparing actions to eliminate the muds and dries that cause them, because the Ministry backed out”, and she referred to the actions initially contemplated in the Plan for the Protection of the Coastal Edge of the Miteco, which contained as priority actions the elimination of muds and dries on the beaches of the Mar Menor.
The mayoress asked the MEPs whether it is the local councils who should assume these responsibilities “despite not having the technicians, the competences or the funds to solve these very serious problems”, and concluded her speech by calling for the support of all the administrations for a serious current problem which the Mar Menor has been suffering from and to which the least attention has been paid.