The start of stabilization works on the beach in the center of Premià de Mar, where several breakwaters will be built and a contribution of 350,000 m3 of sand will be made, has rekindled the debate on the consolidation of the Maresme coastline. For the entities grouped in the Preserve the Coastline platform, it would be enough for the State to force the ports to transfer the sand they accumulate to the breakwaters through bypass operations, as provided for in most concession agreements.
El Maresme has five marinas – Arenys de Mar, Port Balís, Mataró, Premià de Mar and El Masnou – in a 50 kilometer stretch. These infrastructures alter the marine currents and "disfigure the landscape morphologies", point out the activists in the manifesto for a pact for the Maresme coast. According to the regional authorities, the ports systematically fail to fulfill their obligations to transfer the sand that accumulates on the western breakwaters to the areas where the beaches suffer more degradation. That is why the administrations are betting on regeneration projects with dredges and breakwaters to stabilize the most affected beaches.
This is the case of Premià de Mar, where the Ministry for Ecological Transition has acted to stabilize the beach in a stretch of 860 meters along the coast. The project envisages extending the current breakwater in front of the railway station by around 130 meters and finishing it in the shape of an inverted L in the direction of Barcelona. The structure will continue with a further 135 meters submerged perpendicular to the beach. A second breakwater parallel to the beach of 65 meters in the form of a semi-submerged island will be located 75 meters from the coast, which will make it possible to stabilize the 350,000 m3 of sand that will be dumped there. With this they hope to achieve a homogeneous beach of 65 meters wide.
But the environmental organizations are calling on the ministry to carry out the actions foreseen in the Maresme Action Strategy Technical Report and to urge the ports to comply with the transfer of sand, which is not taken into account in any project, and "forcing them to comply with the commitments" to bypass sands.
They assure that the port of Badalona should transfer 130,000 m3 of sand per year through a bypass "that is not carried out", they say. In the port of Masnou, they usually regenerate the beaches in the south of the coast because "their mouths are full" and that is why they have a dredger that transfers the sand that obstructs access. In Premià de Mar, according to the platform, the port would be obliged to transfer 88,000 m3 through a bypass, pipes located in the northern area that would pump the sand beyond the port area to the south of the facility.
Although the port of Arenys de Mar, built in 1961, is not committed to any transshipment, ecologists demand that the protocols and agreements be reviewed so that it also allows the beaches further south of the port facility to be regenerated.
"The coast cannot be as rigid as they project it", points out Sergi Galanó, spokesman for Preserve the Coast, and regrets that the ministry contradicts its own policies when, on the one hand, it does not force the ports to comply with the obligations and, on the other hand, it invests millions in contributions of sand and breakwaters.
