Chloe Glover (Reporter)
NATURE lovers in Malaga are backing a campaign for an urban ‘forest’ park on a former toxic site.
Almost 25,000 people have signed a petition asking Malaga Council to turn the old Repsol petrol storage plant into a 177,000m2 Hyde Park-style attraction.
They object to the current potential plan lodged with the city council to use 100,000m2 of the land between Avenidas Europa and Juan XXIII to house four new skyscrapers for homes and offices.
Hundreds of campaigners staged a cycling ride through the city on February 11 in support of the proposal for the site, which has lain abandoned for decades.
They want the land to be grassed over and planted with thousands of trees native to the Costa del Sol.
They would also like it to include bicycle and walking paths.
“Málaga City Council should commit to not further increasing neighbourhoods with housing to instead provide the city with a real urban forest that places Malaga in the line with other great European capitals,” said a spokesperson for the campaign.
A huge study is currently taking place on the site due to fears it could still be contaminated.
It was used by Repsol to store petrol in the 1970s.
Decontamination of a refinery site to make it safe for people, especially children crawling on the ground, is very, very expensive and requires removal and decontamination of thousands of tons of soil. I would doubt that Spain has the technical expertise and money to do this correctly.
This kind of project would open many doors for collusion and stealing funds as it would need to be funded by Brussels.
Any cleaning up should be done by the company that contaminated the site i.e. Repsol. In my mind that is simple but who’s going to push for that? More likely to try getting it done at the EU expense but I’d say that was very unfair to everyone except Repsol. It would also likely stretch out the matter “forever”.
Nothing will happen. Palomares is still waiting for it’s American radioactivity to be cleaned up. Forty five years later…
Bur when BP fouled the Gulf of Mexico, the Yanks were quick off the mark to hold THEIR feet to the fire.
American contractors were totally responsible for the oil leak in the Gulf but surprise, surprise they got away with it relatively lightly. Just where was the British government to step in and tell the US government where to lay the blame, same with the Piper Alpha tragedy in the North Sea. No one respects cowardly wimps.
The project was the BP operated Gulf Macondo Prospect. None of the parties, British or American did a decent job with this disaster. Safety management was awful, the use of a relatively inexpensive set of parts being responsible for the blowout.
US government had to lean on BP several years to negotiate a clean-up settlement, though it wasn’t adequate to the damage or losses incurred by coastal citizens and businesses.