Thread by @LHreports

Spain has been gripped by the eco-disaster in Europe’s largest salt lagoon. In a new investigation we reveal the role played by runaway industrial pork farming & the repeated refusal by authorities to tackle it #MarMenor

Using forensic techniques like drone photography to satellite imagery in tandem with FOIA requests & ground reporting a disturbing picture emerges of large-scale pollution, environmental crimes & official failures at all levels

@LHreports in a joint investigation w/@guardian, @eldiarioes & @lamarea_com examines the extent to which the drive for cheap meat through intensive pork farming contributed to the disaster in #Murcia

This summer saw the 2nd mass die-off of fish stocks in Mar Menor in the last 3yrs. Meanwhile Spain became EU’s largest pork exporter off back of Chinese demand. Fertilizer run-off is known to contribute to nitrate pollution but pork is ignored

Intensive pork farming produces overwhelming quantities of slurry: about 2 cubic meters of this mix of faeces, urine, food waste, per pig per year, w/a nitrogen concentration 40 x higher than that of wastewater

Using drone footage we detected what’s hidden in plain sight: spills, dumps & an overwhelming lack of waterproof storage facilities

This is a slurry spill in Fuente de Alamo, where nitrate-rich pig manure is leaching into the soil

This is at the same farm. Slurry is simply dumped on nearby land. This form of dumping which leads to water pollution is an environmental crime, Victoria Hormigos, a leading environmental lawyer tells us.

The slurry ponds pictured are simply holes in the ground with no lining, allowing purines to infiltrate the ground. There are more then 500 of these ponds in the Mar Menor catchment, covering 160 hectares

The lack of protection is defended by the government of Murcia as ‘natural waterproofing’, based on a study chaired by Ángel Faz Cano, who has two academic posts: one of those posts is sponsored by meat giant Grupo Fuertes

When we FOIA’d the nature protection department of the Guardia Civil we found that only 8 pig farms in the Mar Menor basin have been sanctioned for slurry violations in the past 5 years

Local authorities knew of the threat posed by slurry but allowed an increase in intensive pig farms. “It’s as if we're giving amnesty to the pork industry.” -- Maria Gimenéz Casalduero, member of the Murcia assembly opposition party

Warning 1 came in 2016 when an algae bloom disfigured the lagoon, authorities in Murcia convened a scientific advisory committee to address the looming crisis. We traced experts who served on the committee, but left disillusioned.

One of them, Julia Martínez, executive director of foundation Nueva Cultura del Agua: "It was an absolute waste of time. There was enormous political manipulation & the committee was not working with the necessary independence.”

2nd warning in 2018 when the @eucommission opened a sanction process against Spain over nitrate pollution. The case covers Murcia and Mar Menor. Last July, the EC confirmed that regional authorities in Murcia continue to fail to comply

3rd warning: In March 2019 Spain’s Environment Ministry published a report on threats to Mar Menor warning that intensive livestock farming and pig slurry was a serious threat "not because of its quality, but because of its quantity"

Despite all the red flags, the number of pig farms increased in the Mar Menor catchment area by 39 since 2018, with 35k more pigs which equates to 70,000 more cubic meters of polluting slurry each year

This is not just a story about a single lake, it's emblematic of a much wider crisis created by the explosion of industrial pork farming in Spain. Vast swathes of Aragon, Catalonia and Castilla y León suffer nitrate pollution

This is an investigation supported by the Food Systems newsroom of @LHreports. Major contributions by @polpareja @DaniDominguezRo @ana_rox_ @JoseAntonio_BG @bearamalhosilva @fabiolavillamor @ashifa_k @Noemimena10 @LudoHekman

At @eldiarioes a thorough chronology of the ecocide is presented, from the green soup to the second anoxia

eldiario.es/politica/gobie…

“Mar Menor is a wake-up call," says a politician in the Guardian "if you want to supply China with jamón [ham], you do it through the destruction of territory and becoming a dumping ground for waste from the international pigmeat market.”

theguardian.com/environment/20…

Story from our Food Systems newsroom in @lamarea_com on how the government of #Murcia obviates the responsibility of the large pig farms in the Mar Menor disaster. By @DaniDominguezRo

lamarea.com/2021/10/13/el-…