The central government recalled, through a parliamentary response to the Murcia senators of the Popular Party, which would grant an authorization to the Executive … Regional “so that water could extract from the Quaternary aquifer” from the Campo de Cartagena, thus allowing the arrival of water loaded with nutrients to the Mar Menor. This possibility already put it on the table last year, in another response to the PP senators, where it specified several conditions to obtain that permission. In this case, the State Executive clarifies that this scenario is possible without “a subsequent use” of the drained water of the aquifer, that is, it is not used for irrigation, and with “the exclusive purpose of lowering its water table.”
This type of authorizations, which regulates temporary water derivations, “is expressly provided for in article 77 of the Hydraulic Public Domain Regulation,” they add in the response to the popular.
In this case, Senators Francisco Bernabé, Antonio Luengo, José Ramón Díez de Revenga and Antonia López asked a question written in the Upper House to know the reason “for which the Government continues to allow a authentic fresh water river loaded with nutrients to continue daily to the Mar Menor through the Rambla del Albujón.”
Two requirements
Building the El Mojón denitrifier and passing a favorable environmental assessment to extract water from the aquifer would be two requirements established by the Government for this authorization for a period of two years. This possibility was already rejected by the Autonomous Community, which denied last year to have powers to drain the quaternary, a task that, they pointed out from San Esteban, belongs to the Segura Hydrographic Confederation.
In the new response, the government mentions its investment of 675 million euros to recover Mar Menor. Remember that the pressures and the origin of the nutrients that reach the lagoon “are mostly from the excessive use of nitrates from agricultural activity.” He also cites the inadequate management of manure and, to a lesser extent, losses in existing sanitation networks, which have caused the contamination of the waters of the underground mass of the Campo de Cartagena, the Rambla del Albujón and the Mar Menor ».
He ensures that the origin of the albujón flows is found in the «drains and returns of irrigation from agricultural activity loaded with nitrates and phosphates; The wastewater purifying stations managed by the Region of Murcia, and the unknown spills from agricultural and livestock activities ». It also points to the aquifer, a mass of water with “high piezometric levels as a consequence of irrigation contributions.”
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