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ARCHIVED - Red flag on Mazarron Playa Puerto beach following waste water overflow
Mazarrón was hit by a heavy hailstorm on Monday overwhelming the waste water system
Mazarrón has suffered from waste water problems for years due to poor town planning by a former council which failed to take into account the peculiar nature of the location in which the Puerto de Mazarrón is built, with a large area of the PdM constructed over the old flat salinas salt pans.
The Construction growth of the town has simply outgrown the original waste water system constructed, the result being that every time there is heavy rain the Bahía area floods, in spite of numerous attempts over the years to upgrade the system and resolve the historic problems.
This was the case on Monday and for the umpteenth time Policia Local were obliged to block off roads in the Bahia area of the port due to localised flooding and there was also a problem with residual waters from the waste disposal pipework servicing the plaza de las Comunidades Autónomas which overflowed, discharging directly into the sea via the principal beach of the urban town, the Playa del Puerto.
For this reason the beach near to the point of the “vertido” was closed off by Policia Local and Protección Civíl to prevent bathers entering the water and this precaution continued on Tuesday, the hope being that the natural action of the tides would remove the offending contamination and the beach be deemed fit for use.
Raquel Raja, concejal for Servicios del Litoral explained that “everything depends on the water analytics which are carried out to determine the water quality.”
The red no bathing flag can only be removed by the Ministry of Health once the water quality has been retested and on Wednesday the decision was taken to maintain the red flag in situ pending positive results.