Managing mosquitoes
By Alex Watkins GUARDAMAR town hall this week has been busy fighting the mosquito plague.
A spokesman for the council said the problems they cause in the municipality seem to have got worse over the last few years.
Their numbers have increased considerably across the whole Vega Baja, including the coast, after the recent rain and high temperatures, he added.
Although the town hall has applied treatments to kill larvae and adult mosquitoes two or three times a week since the beginning of August, the council has asked the provincial government to draw up a plan that will ensure more effective control of these insects around the Vega Baja. By Alex Watkins LANDOWNERS will be ordered to remove any rubbish buried illegally under their farms in La Murada (Orihuela), confirmed a spokesman for the regional environment department.
The association Vertivega believes this decomposing untreated waste could be the source of nine rivers of leachates seeping out of the ground in the Sierra de Abanilla, affecting land protected by the EU to preserve endangered birdlife.
According to the Orihuela court investigating the case, at least a million tonnes of rubbish could have been buried there between 2009 and 2011.
The Podemos party has demanded the regional government comply with an EU order to shut down and seal the landfill 'for the serious health risks and economic and social harm it causes, as well as more than probable contamination of the land, aquifers and farm produce from this area', otherwise the country faces being fined.
A report requested by the previous regional government a year ago concluded the leachates 'come from rubbish buried on private land and not the activity of Proambiente', the company that owns the landfill between La Murada and Abanilla (Murcia).
Podemos insisted the regional government should urgently assess the damage caused by the rubbish, remove the leachates and regenerate the environment.
According to the regional secretary for the environment, Julià Álvaro, the process to order the landowners to do this was already underway when the new coalition government took over
He noted it was 'moving forward very slowly so we are trying to speed it up as much as we can', but there are compulsory bureaucratic steps, including periods allowing those affected to object, which ' slow the process down' and 'have to be respected'.
Sr Álvaro explained that if the landowners refuse to obey the order, the regional government will hold a public tender to find a company to do the work.
The cost, which is estimated will be about ¤ 1 million, will be passed on to the landowners afterwards.
No date has been set yet for the court trial for these offences against businesspeople including the owner of the rubbish collection company Sirem and ex-owner of Proambiente, Ángel Fenoll.
Nevertheless, the councillor insisted that resolving the problem is a priority because the pollution is 'more than evident'.