For the first time, and under the banner of the Mancomunidad, all the Costa Tropical town halls are pulling together to demand anti-beach-erosion work.
No doubt it was the presence of heavy machinery on the beaches in July belatedly repairing storm damage to the area’s beaches that has drawn the town halls of different political colours together to collectively demand the construction of breakwaters etc to prevent storms sweeping away sections of the beaches.
“We are not going to permit that this situation happens again. We shall fight to make sure that our beaches meet the summer season in good condition, and above all, to find definitive solutions,” promised the Mancomunidad Chairman, Sergio García Alabarce.
Sr. García feels ashamed that the Dirección Provincial de Costas carried out the beach-repair work right at the beginning of July: “The worst thing was that they didn’t have the intention of carrying out the task – it was the pressure put on them that forced them to find the money to do it,” he pointed out.
For the next summer, the Costa will start putting pressure on the said administration, which belongs to the Central Government’s Ministry of the Environment in Madrid, as soon as the spring gales are over so that so bathers and lorries have to share the beach.
The solution, says the Chairman, is not to have to repair them each year, which is very expensive and temporary – the lorried in sand always gets washed away again; in other words, it’s almost literally a case of throwing money into the sea.
Therefore the coastal town halls and the Mancomunidad will file a joint request for the Central Government to plan and execute coastal defences against beach erosion, thus providing a permanent solution to the problem.
We’re talking about breakwaters on the La Rábita and El Pozuelo beaches of Albuñol; Peña Parda in La Herradura and Playa de Cotobro in Almuñécar.
For Charchuna and Calahonda we’re talking about submerged barriers as well as breakwaters. They want to included the compulsory purchase of land behind the beaches there for parking, which is lacking ever since the Central Government built the low wall along the road beach road.
As far as Torrenueva goes, they want the breakwaters extended. The demand includes beach defences for Castell de Ferro and the Punta del Rincón area.
Which brings us to Motril were Playa Poniente needs a permanent solution to the large hole dug out by the sea.
The list goes on and encompasses every beach with problems along the Costa Tropical, including the termination of the paseo work in Salobreña so we’ll leave it at that.
(News: Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)