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ARCHIVED - New contract for drafting of Portman Bay regeneration project awarded
Works are unlikely to resume until 2023
The long-running saga of the Portmán Bay regeneration project continues with yet another attempt to award the project to carry out the task of removing millions of tonnes of sterile waste which were dumped into the bay during the years of intensive open-cast mining of the Sierra Minera in La Unión.
The huge volumes of mineral waste clogged-up the bay to such an extent that the shoreline is now one kilometre further out at sea than it was 50 years ago and the dumping remains one of the worst environmental disasters in Spain.
Attempts to remove the silt and recover the bay have been fraught with issues, one of the most controversial aspects of the situation being that the land surrounding the bay is still owned by the company which caused the environmental damage in the first place and which stands to benefit most from the commercial developments which will follow the regeneration; the land is however, held by subsequent evolutions of the company itself, which technically no longer exists, so therefore has no legal obligation to clear up the mess it created.
There have many projects to regenerate the bay over the years, all of which have fallen by the wayside due to various questions being raised about the veracity of the adjudication process (in one case rival bids against the successful winner had disappeared during the adjudication process) and in another the winning bidder was found to be engaged in criminal activity, the result being that the years have dragged by without the project being completed.
This latest attempt has now moved forward, with the adjudication of the contract to prepare the technical project for the regeneration which has been awarded by the Ministry for Ecological Transition of the national government to UTE PROES-Ibermed Ingeniería for 220,000 euros with a nine month period of execution.
A meeting of the monitoring commission will be held on September 21 in Madrid with the attendance of the Secretary of State for the Environment, Hugo Morán during which both Portmán residents and the council of La Unión, will request confirmed deadlines for the resumption of the works.
The regeneration works have been paralysed since April 2019 as a result of a ruling issued by the National Court in response to an appeal filed by Acciona against the awarding of the contract to the UTE Marco Obra Pública SA-Ciomar SL.
In addition, some problems were detected in the execution of the works, the resumption of which requires the drafting of this new project which has now been awarded.
The Mayor of La Unión, Pedro López, believes it most likely that the regeneration work will not resume until 2023 at the earliest.
Images: Archive