Ferries are noisy, but out at sea nobody notices, yet tied up at the dock in the early hours, people notice, especially the ones trying to sleep.
It’s not the same intensity all year round, of course, because when the demand for ferries rises to meet the traffic of North Africans heading home for their summer hols, the frequency of the comings and goings increases, logically.
For the above reasons Motril Port has awarded a contract for a project to reduce the said noise. Work will start in September and will last four months. So, as a Christmas present, nearby residents will slumber in relative silence.
How? After all, we are talking about the equivalent of a metal block of flats with a lorry park underneath, and that’s without taking into account the ship’s generators and worker movement readying the ferry for its next departure.
The Port Authorities explained that it is going to use a sistema de descarbonización. Eh? It means that the ferries will plug into a dockyard electrical supply and so not need to run their own diesel generators; i.e., less pollution and less noise.
The P.A. say that at the moment docked ferries dump 771 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year – you would need to plant 78,000 trees in 12 months to suck it all up, they point out, so the new system has a twofold advantage.
Anyway, 22 companies came forward, from which Acsa Sorigue placed the winning bid. This company already has experience in this kind of project in the ports of Barcelona and Valencia.
The project had an undisclosed budget of 571,131 euros but the winning bid was for 445,482 euros, meaning that Motril Port managed to save some money, which is good because the work will have only social benefit as opposed to economic benefit.
The project entails laying an underground line from the main electricity substation to two hook-up points on the dockside. The ferries themselves will also have to make some changes so there’s a financial incentive in the form of a 50% permanent discount on docking fees.
Ouch! That’s an annual loss of 130,000 euros, but on the other hand the ferry company, Armas, will have to foot the bill of adapting the ferries to the new hook-up system.
Bear in mind that this impressive expenditure by the port is made only in order to ‘get on better with the neighbours’ and is not made in order to generate greater earnings, so a good deal of kudos is in order.
After all, you could argue that choosing the Varadero (motril port’s residential area) as somewhere to live was probably not a good idea if you are a light sleeper – it’s like buying a flat in a square where most of the night bars are and then complaining about the noise.
You can also point out that the vast majority of people living in the Varadero didn’t choose it; they were born there or property rents elsewhere are prohibitive for their pockets.
(News: Motril, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andaluia)