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Date Published: 21/01/2022
ARCHIVED - Major setbacks in plan to renovate Portman Bay
The project in La Unión, Murcia, has been stalled since 2019
Plans to renovate and transform Portman Bay, in the municipality of La Unión, have been in the works for some time, but there has been yet another delay as the State Attorney has failed to certify that the initial contract is correct.
The regional government approved a new renovation plan for the bay back in November and the contract to draw up the procedure for the project should have been put out to tender during the first two weeks of December. However, the State Attorney has yet to approve the contract meaning that the renovation plans, which have been frozen since 2019, remain up in the air.
Between 1957 and 1987, open-cast mining operations in the bay left Portman filled with millions of tonnes of sterile waste, creating an enormous and toxic landfill. Over the years dozens of promises have been made to regenerate the bay and attract tourists to the natural enclave, but these plans have yet to materialise.
See more: The ecological disaster of Portman bay
The most recent plans disclosed to Portman residents state that the regional government aims to begin the regeneration work “no later than 2023”. So far, the Ministry of Ecological Transition has spent 21 million of their 60-million-euro budget on a project which is currently at a standstill.
However, work to consolidate the barrier that separates the Mediterranean from a huge body of water mixed with heavy metals is still going ahead. The terrain barrier was damaged by the 2019 DANA storm and other episodes of extreme weather, resulting in some of the contaminated water seeping into the sea. The company Tragsa is in charge of reinforcing and restoring the barrier with large stone blocks to prevent the waste from Portman bay damaging the wider ecosystem of the Mediterranean.
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