Specialists from the companies that will draw up the project for the removal of sludge from the beaches of the Mar Menor in Cartagena have begun field work this week to delimit the specific places where measurements, biological studies and sediment analysis will be carried out during the first phase of the four phases of the work.
The technicians will measure the thickness of the mud and draw up an updated map of the current profiles of the beaches that the municipal government wants to restore. According to the mayor, Noelia Arroyo, the work plan presented by the consultancy firm sets December as the end of the fieldwork and preliminary studies phase and the beginning of the second phase of the study of alternatives.
“The teams working on the study have started to gather information on the ground, they will talk to local specialists and, with all this information, they will study all the possible alternatives for recovering the beaches and will make a concrete proposal on the most suitable method or methods for removing the mud and recovering the beach profiles. According to the work plan, in February we will have the pilot projects and in March we will have the basic project and the Environmental Impact Study”, said Arroyo.
Once the Environmental Impact Study has been approved, the joint venture will have to draw up the execution project and obtain the corresponding environmental authorisations.
The mayoress recalled that the government’s objective is to eliminate the areas of mud generated by the decomposition of algae and to recover the profile of the beaches by removing the dry land that interferes with the marine dynamics and aggravates the problem of the mud.
The research and proposals will be developed by a team made up of 11 specialists with backgrounds in biological, environmental and marine sciences, as well as civil engineers from the companies MCValnera and Tecnoambiente.
These firms, united in a joint venture, won the tender for the contract which the Town Council put out to tender with a grant of 300,000 euros provided by the Regional Ministry of the Environment of the Autonomous Community.
The mayoress stressed that the work is “a technical challenge because we are going to work in a very delicate ecosystem, and for this reason the first works will be experimental in nature and progress will be made depending on the results”.
