The Local Police in El Campello have identified a company responsible for dumping dirty water into the sea at L’Almadrava beach. This discovery provides the council with an explanation for the multiple spillages affecting the maritime area and the bathing zone accessed from the Alkabir urbanisation. Two years ago, the blocked pumping station at that site was found to contain thousands of wet wipes, cotton buds, denim trousers, and several T-shirts.
Following the announcement that CCTV cameras would be installed in Alkabir, no further spillages were registered there, but they continued at L’Almadrava beach. The Councillor for Beaches, Services, and Security, Rafa Galvañ, alongside the Local Police, decided to adjust the angle of the surveillance cameras for a period to focus directly on the manholes of the general sanitation network. Within days, the culprit was filmed, photographed, and reported.
The offender is a company based within the same municipality, specialising in unblocking drains and emptying septic tanks. The recordings and images are definitive, capturing the exact moment a tanker truck arrived at the site, lifted one of the manholes, deployed a long, thick hose, and discharged its entire contents into the general sanitation network. Within minutes, the system collapsed due to the volume, and the dirty water was evacuated onto the beach.
“It was all very strange because the pumping stations function well, but on specific days and at specific times they registered an unusual load, and the system collapsed,” the councillor stated.
The company was caught red-handed and will face disciplinary proceedings from the town council, which has passed all documentation, recordings, and images to the Guardia Civil. The armed institute has opened an investigation through its Nature Protection Service (SEPRONA) to determine the liabilities the company must assume, and environmental crime has not been ruled out.
“In more than one plenary session and in briefing committees, I have stated that these discharges were very suspicious, as the general sanitation network registered unexplainable volumes at very specific times,” Galvañ asserted. “There are no words to qualify these practices, which do so much damage to the marine environment and to the image of El Campello as a tourist destination.”
The councillor highlighted that these discharges were used by the organisation Ecologistas en Acción to award L’Almadrava beach and El Campello a “black flag” for pollution in their report, linking it to housing and a growing population.
The town council is currently awaiting a response to a formal request sent to Ecologistas en Acción, asking them to provide analyses, laboratory details, dates, and times of water samples that scientifically prove the beach is contaminated.
“At the moment we have received no reply,” Galvañ noted. Municipal legal services, which possess scientific reports from the Coastal Ecology Institute indicating the opposite, will wait a reasonable amount of time before deciding on further actions.
Galvañ also expressed frustration with municipal political parties, specifically Izquierda Unida and Podemos, who have called for a protest at L’Almadrava beach to raise the black flag.
“They are politicising the issue. These two parties are launching the high tourist season by taking photos to denounce a state of pollution that is false, and which only happens at very specific times. During those times, we prohibit bathing and do not reopen the beach until scientists from the Coastal Ecology Institute certify that the pollution no longer exists. They are harming the town, but they care little about that,” the councillor concluded.
