San Javier (Murcia) (EFE).- The Ministry for the Ecological Transition (Miteco) is going to dismantle the abandoned facilities of the Puerto Mayor project, which was intended to be the largest marina in the Mediterranean (located in the Mar Menor, in Murcia) and will environmentally restore Caleta del Estacio, for which an estimated budget of 22.4 million euros has been reserved, with an execution period of 18 months.
This was announced this Monday in the area where this project will be carried out, in the municipality of San Javier, by the Minister and Vice President of the Government, Teresa Ribera, in an act that was attended by the Southeast Naturalist Association (ANSE), a group that has been demanding the renaturation of this space and the creation of a large dune park for controlled public use for more than a decade.
Puerto Mayor is a failed construction project for a large port for more than 900 moorings at the entrance of the Estacio channel from the Mediterranean, in La Manga del Mar Menor. It was paralyzed after the intervention of ANSE and Greenpeace, the Ministry of the Environment and, finally, a court ruling.
It was an “enormously aggressive” urban construction project that had urbanization, hotels, a port and a golf course,” recalled Ribera, whose department requested the reversal of the concession, already expired, in favor of the General Directorate of Coasts in 2021. .
The dismantling project chosen by Miteco contemplates the removal of sheet piles, fills, breakwaters and contaminated soil, as well as dune restoration, the elimination of invasive species and the construction of elevated wooden walkways. Your tender will be held throughout this year.
Ribera has also referred to the neighborhood struggle to prevent the construction of a villa in the last virgin area of Cala del Pino, also in La Manga but on the slope of the Mar Menor.
“I fully understand the frustration of the residents,” said the minister, who considers it a “big mistake” that the Cartagena City Council has not included a specific modification in its Urban Planning Plan to preserve the area of buildings.
It has also clarified that Miteco cannot buy these lands because it has not been scheduled, but that the regional government could do so, just as it did with Cabo Cope, in Águilas, using its right of withdrawal to acquire the farms that it had previously bought Anse to protect them environmentally.
“Sometimes we have found ourselves alone,” acknowledged Ribera, who has asked the Autonomous Community to “show a minimum of commitment.”
Likewise, he has shown his surprise at the statements by the mayor of San Javier, José Miguel Luengo, questioning the involvement of the Ministry in the recovery of the Mar Menor, since the money to invest in sanitation and purification that this consistory has received “comes from the Miteco ”, when it was up to the city council to have financed it, with or without the support of the regional government.
For Ribera, it is a “record” that “in just over a year we have activated 100.50 million euros already invested or transferred to local Administrations” to recover the Mar Menor.
“Our commitment and our conviction is that fine rain is needed” in terms of the actions to be carried out, but also “the complicity and commitment” of the town halls and the regional government, stressed the minister, who pointed out that the flagship project of the Autonomous Community has remained “stuck”, in reference to the stoppage of the bioreactors due to a geotechnical problem.
Teresa Ribera will also find out on Monday the current situation of the environmental restoration and regeneration projects that are being carried out in the Marchamalo and La Unión salt flats. Regarding the latter, she has commented that she is going to “listen to the neighbors” because the commitment is that the project has her opinions.
In this regard, he recalled that it was the former socialist Minister of the Environment Cristina Narbona who initiated the recovery of the Bay of Portmán, a project that was paralyzed during the Government of Mariano Rajoy, and that “the then mayor who still intervenes in the Senate in a very grandiose way he did nothing either, neither as mayor, nor as a councilor”, alluding to the current senator of the PP Francisco Bernabé.
