- The ministry highlights the “positive behavior” for the Mar Menor of its actions in the catchment basin after the Alice cut-off
The Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO), through a specific call for aid from the Biodiversity Foundation, will publish this week in the Official State Gazette the call for the recovery of the ecological functionality of the Mar Menor, to which it allocates 11.5 million euros, through environmental improvement in intensive livestock farms in the lagoon catchment basin and support for extensive livestock in the Campo de Menor. Cartagena.
This was announced on Tuesday by the Secretary of State for the Environment, Hugo Morán, during his speech at the Inter-Administrative Commission of the Mar Menor, which he chaired for the first time, according to the rotating shift established in the Agreement of the Governing Council of the autonomous community of the Region of Murcia on the creation of this governance body included in Law 3/2020, of Recovery and Protection of the Mar Menor.
The MITECO proposal, which has already been approved by the Board of Trustees of the Biodiversity Foundation, is included in line 6 of the Framework of Priority Actions to Recover the Mar Menor (MAPMM), endowed with a global budget of 675.05 million, where support for the transition of productive sectors is proposed.
In this way, the central government seeks to promote the recovery of the Mar Menor catchment basin, while accompanying and supporting the transition and environmental improvement of specific productive sectors.
The three eligible lines are support for extensive or semi-extensive livestock farming and the promotion of economic diversification in the territory; the promotion of changes in intensive livestock management and practices to reduce the environmental impact, in the production and polluting potential of slurry, and in improvements in the management and treatment of waste and slurry to reduce its polluting potential.
The projects must be accompanied by the scientific field, which will allow guiding and directing actions, as well as generating new knowledge of this important economic activity.
Each project may receive a grant of between 300,000 euros and 2 million, with co-financing of up to 90% of the budget and have a duration of 36 months.
So far, the Biodiversity Foundation has already granted 14.8 million to 10 projects demonstrating best practices in the agricultural field, which contribute to the ecological transition in agriculture and the reduction of impacts at source in the Mar Menor catchment basin, although the City Council of Cartagena has renounced one of them, valued at 1.8 million.
BALANCE OF THE MAPMM
Morán has made an assessment of the MAPMM since the last meeting of this commission, held last March, highlighting that “never before has so much progress been made and in such a short time in an intervention of this magnitude”, having already activated, in less than three years, 541.9 million, “which are invested directly in this territory”.
In this sense, the Secretary of State has stressed that the “more than 70 specific measures that the MAPMM has designed for the Mar Menor and its catchment basin are currently underway (completed, in execution or in different stages of processing), despite the enormous technical and administrative complexity of some of them and the dependence on other administrations in the processing of some of these projects”.
Regarding these interventions, Morán has welcomed the “positive behavior” of the actions in the mining wadis that, according to data offered by the Technical Office of the Mar Menor based on the estimates of the Segura Hydrographic Confederation (CHS), the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO) and the CEBAS-CSIC, “have allowed to retain about 2,000 tons of sediments and dragging from the Sierra Minera during the last episode of rain, causing a lesser affectation of the Alice dana on the lagoon”.
Morán has detailed that the retention systems located in the Carrasquilla watercourse have shown “excellent effectiveness” by retaining up to 1,400 tons of contributions to the lagoon, demonstrating that, “as all the experts suggest, the actions, the ordering and control of uses throughout the catchment basin are sine qua non conditions to improve the ecological status of the Mar Menor”.
The head of MITECO has warned that “the effects of climate change and the profound transformation of the territory cause a greater incidence in these episodes with the same rainfall”. For this reason, he reiterated the need to promote the development of Law 3/2020 on the Recovery and Protection of the Mar Menor, the Territorial Planning Plan of the Catchment Basin and the Action Program in Vulnerable Areas by Nitrates.
In this regard, the ministerial official has reported that MITECO is already outlining the last administrative procedures to execute the works in the Cobatillas watercourse and the second phase of the actions in the mining riverbeds.
OTHER NOTABLE
MILESTONESOther milestones in the development of the MAPMM are the 4 large projects already in execution for the remediation of mining complexes, which act on some 25 mining facilities; the second call for aid to municipalities to improve their sanitation and treatment networks, endowed with another 20 million and the imminent start of the Green Belt, with the Carmolí renaturation area and the next tender for the flood park in Los Alcázares.
STATE OF THE MAR MENOR
The Secretary of State for the Environment has also informed the members of the Inter-Administrative Commission about the latest data provided by the quasi-real-time monitoring system of the Mar Menor managed by the IEO, which confirm an improvement in the ecological status of the lagoon in recent days, in which the level of oxygen in the southern area has increased, which was until last Saturday, October 25, in anoxia parameters.
In this regard, one of the agreements reached in the commission is the creation of a technical-scientific coordination committee, whose task is that representatives of the three administrations can analyse the data provided by the lagoon monitoring networks in crisis situations such as the one that has occurred in recent weeks as a result of the sediment-laden runoff caused by the Alice dana.
In addition, the members of the Commission have agreed to explore the administrative channels for the regional government and the municipalities to receive the land restored by MITECO once the different actions included in the MAPMM are completed, such as the remediation of the Sierra Minera or the Green Belt.
Morán plans to attend this Tuesday afternoon to the Mar Menor Council, in which members of the Regional Administration, the State Administration and the municipalities are represented; the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Mar Menor and civil society organizations.
