The City Council of Cartagena has put out to tender the pilot project that will serve to specify the procedures to be applied in the mud removal operations in front of the beaches of the Mar Menor, as announced by the mayor, Noelia Arroyo.
The contract, which comes out at a cost of 75,500 euros, has been tendered by «a simplified contracting procedure and parallel to the environmental procedures to reduce deadlines and ensure that all tests are done during the dry season in the Mar Menor, which is the most conducive to prevent effects on biodiversity,» details the City Council.
These operations will be carried out over a period of six weeks in reduced spaces. Specifically, the capping operations will be tested on a surface area of 600 metres, while the extraction will be carried out on 150 cubic metres of sludge.
«Environmental guarantees
«With this pilot we will put into practice in Estrella de Mar the extraction and capping methods proposed in the project that has been drawn up for the City Council by environmental experts. In both cases, all the methodologies proposed in the study, the working systems and the use of machinery will be tested to evaluate their effectiveness and check their effect on the environment», said the councillor, according to the same sources.
The project, which has been supervised by the Mar Menor scientific committee, will be carried out with all the environmental guarantees. The installation of anti turbidity barriers is planned, and the peculiarities of species such as the fartet, the seahorse and the Cymodocea nodosa have been taken into account in the design of these operations, adds the Consistory.
«Both the pilot project and a large part of the sludge removal contract that will follow will be financed with the 700,000 euro subsidy granted by the Community,» said the mayoress, who pointed out that «these types of operations that are carried out outside the beach are the responsibility of the State». «They were in the plans of the Ministry, but were eliminated and, therefore, we decided to promote these works from the City Council».