MIPOLARE Project: School Outing, by Ángel Torres Soto (4º C ESO)

I’m going to talk about mining in Cartagena’s mountain range because my classmates and I had an outing to that place for our Biology formation. There we learnt that some researchers have restored Cartagena’s mountain range and they have used a lot of methods to reforest it. They have also conducted a project called MIPOLARE, which means “post-mined polluted landscapes reclamation by means of valorization of different residues’’ (rehabilitación de paisajes mineros contaminados mediante la valorización de diferentes residuos) and the duration of this project goes from September 2010 to August 2014, so it is a project that has lasted quite a long time.
There are relevant institutions supporting and participating in the project, such as the Polytechnic University of Cartagena, Portman Golf SA, the General Directorate of Environment or the Directorate of Industry, Energy and Mining at the Presidential Department of the Region of Murcia.

The main objective of MIPOLARE is to evaluate, to demonstrate and to disseminate a sustainable alternative to rehabilitate the minig deposits in the Region of Murcia through the application of industrial and farming residues.

People who work in the MIPOLARE project intend to:
- Neutralize acidity and immobilize the heavy metals present in the deposit’s material.
- Increase the organic matter content to create soil.
- Reduce the erosion of the wind and the water energy, as a result of soil creation and vegetation establishment.
- Create a new landscape with and educational use.

Personally, I think it was interesting, but I think that it would be better for adults than for teenagers because in my opinion, it was very long and a little boring too. However, the outing became more interesting when we went to the site in the mountain range. I enjoyed it a lot because I went there with very good friends and it was great fun. All in all, the outing was very good in general.

To conclude, I’d like to add something else: The MIPOLARE project has a fantastic organization but I think it is very bad that they spent all that money. It is exactly 4,000,000 euros. It has a very good and nice objective, so I hope they do it well.