Sitges Town Council is joining forces with the authorities in Vilanova i la Geltrú and Cubelles to request the ‘Coastal Demarcation of the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge’ to draw up a study of the dynamics of its coastlines, including the Natura 2000 protected areas network.
The will of the three councils is that this document ‘specifies the problems of each of the beaches on the Garraf coast, in order to define a model and common objectives’.
In addition to this detailed report, the councils are asking for three concrete actions: the recovery and maintenance of the posidonia and algueró meadows as the first barrier to contain the sand; the recovery of the dune system as a second natural barrier to prevent erosion and beach retreat; and the recovery of wetlands as the third natural barrier after the dune system.
The coastlines of Sitges, Vilanova and Cubelles share common problems that the three councils want to solve with a long-term view.
A paradigm shift that eschews ‘hard interventions such as breakwaters or dredging, which have worked occasionally, but have not had an optimal result in general’, as can be the case with increasingly frequent sea storms, according to their statement.
Their aim, therefore, is to ‘rethink the strategies aimed at guaranteeing the protection of beaches with natural measures and with global interventions on the coast’.
The statement describes the seafront of the three towns as areas ‘densely populated and with a great pressure of use due to their logistic, urban planning and touristic value’. And it is precisely this reason that they blame for the ‘disappearance of most coastal ecosystems, such as dune systems and marine grasslands’. A situation aggravated by the loss of sand and the regression of the beaches due to various reasons.
The councillor for Environmental Action and Ecological Transition of Sitges, Carme Gasulla, said that ‘we have problems and diagnoses shared with the rest of the Garraf, despite the fact that each one has specific issues and, therefore, we can have different solutions’. She said that ‘it is time to make a common front to demand from the Ministry that it provides serious, scientific and sustainable solutions to the problem of managing the sand on our coast’.
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