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Mazarrón Town Hall votes to tackle Camposol garden waste problem
Councillors have supported a further motion to clear the long-neglected flytipping hotspots, but volunteer neighbourhood groups still remain key as there is no concrete strategy yet
In a plenary session of the Mazarrón Town Hall this Tuesday May 27, councillors unanimously voted for a motion presented by lone Vox councilman Carlos Corvalán Roldán for the green waste piled on Sectors A, B, C and D of the Camposol urbanisation to be cleared.For years, several plots of land on all these Camposol sectors have been focal points for the agglomeration of not only green waste from gardening, but also general waste such as furniture and other trash that is not supposed to be flytipped there.
These plots of land have gone uncleared for so long because there is nowhere to put the waste, not only on Camposol but almost anywhere in the municipality of Mazarrón. For that reason, it is not only some Camposol residents but also people from outside the urbanisation who come and dump their waste illegally in these areas.
According to regional law in Murcia, all green waste must be composted and not burnt in bonfires, but the problem for the municipality of Mazarrón is that there is no municipal composting centre where the Camposol green waste can be taken.
In addition, the local Ecoparque rubbish tip has limited capacity to be able to handle as much waste as is produced by the generally fast-growing plants in Camposol gardens, along with all the other garbage in the municipality.
Possible solutions to the Camposol garden waste piles
The creation of a municipal composting plant specifically for Mazarrón would cost an estimated €1-2 million, for which there is currently no budget. Many other municipalities around the Region of Murcia suffer from a similar problem, and as an alternative the regional government is looking into opening a vast composting plant in Los Alcázares that could serve the whole Region.
There have been attempts in the past to subcontract the green waste collection and private company, but the fact that the gardening waste is mixed with and contaminated by other general waste makes it prohibitively expensive.
The motion presented this Tuesday is essentially a repetition of other similar motions which have been presented in the past, and only restates the necessity to resolve the issue for Camposol and all Mazarrón residents.
However, no clear roadmap for action has been agreed upon and the fact that a desire to solve the issue was expressed by all parties does not automatically imply that there will be either funding or a viable solution to the existing problems any time in the immediate future.
More ‘awareness raising’ needed
In her comments to the plenary session, Councillor for Camposol & International Relations, Carmen Navarro Paredes, explained that her department has been aware of the problem for a long time, and that a first step to solving it must be stopping additional general waste from being added to the areas of what is only supposed to be green waste, for which they have already been working behind the scenes.
“There is going to be a much larger campaign to raise awareness once it is cleaned up, because we have already tried... to clean up some accumulations [of waste] and it did not even last eight days,” she said.
Councillor Navarro is also the Councillor for the Treasury, Health, Civil Protection & Municipal Emergency Services in Mazarrón, and only took over the councillorship of Camposol after the death of Silvana Buxton.
She explained that the idea will be to clean up each of the affected areas progressively, and once that is done put up large signs and CCTV cameras around to stop more flytipping, a plan that she said has already been discussed with the Camposol Business Association and Associación de Vecinos de Camposol residents’ association, to be able to regulate the situation.
“Although it has been said that people come from outside [to leave their waste], most of it comes from the [Camposol] residents themselves,” she said. “It is necessary to educate them a little bit... that only green waste is to be deposited there and that there exists a telephone number that they can call to have their waste, such as furniture, picked up and taken away.”
The phone number for the collection of bulky domestic waste by Bahía de Mazarrón Ingeniería Urbana is 0034 968 333 294. The item(s) will then be collected from outside your property on the day stated in the phone call.
Camposol: The present and the future
The bonds with funds for the public areas of the Camposol urbanisation to be finished according to the original Plan Parcial should finally be freed up once the process of the Town Hall taking over responsibility for those areas is completed, about which all Camposol homeowners were notified by letter.
While this will provide extra funding for Camposol, this money cannot be used for anything posterior to the original construction plans for the urbanisation, and consequently will not be available for use to either build or maintain a waste disposal or processing plant.
Given the lack of a suitable solution by the authorities for so many years, Camposol neighbourhood associations and volunteer gardening groups have been the ones who have taken it upon themselves to handle problems facing the community, using their own money and initiative. While laudable as a form of direct action, this does not excuse the fact solutions are still needed at the municipal level.
What remains to be seen is, despite the espoused political to resolve the issue, what concrete and affordable actions can be taken.
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