Water Quality

The APA must have an adequate characterisation of all the environmental variables within its management sphere, the quality of the port waters being one of the priority goals with regard to environmental control and follow-up.

The need to establish standard operating protocols in the sphere of maritime engineering resulted in the development of the MWR (Maritime Work Recommendations) Programme. The establishment of the Technical Commission charged with its development in 1987 led to a series of Technical Standards being written, setting out the procedures, methods and criteria of execution in maritime and port works carried out at state owned ports.

The breadth of the subject matter of the recommendations required them to be structured in different themed series. Among them, Series 5: Maritime and Port Works in the Coastal Environment, included the document “ROM 5.1. Quality of Port Area Coastal Waters” whose execution culminated in 2013 with the updating of ROM 5.1-13, which incorporated the calibration of some aspects of the original methodological proposal. The purpose of this, in which regulatory, methodological and technological aspects are brought together, is to act as a document which forms the basis of the planning and development of port water quality management systems. This methodology is the one that the Port Authority uses for water quality control and supervision.

Evaluation of the state of the water mass.

The Port of Alicante, like other general interest ports, is designated a very modified coastal water mass. For these masses, the criteria used for their assessment are those set forth in Royal Decree 817/2015, and the reference year from which the control and follow-up of ROM 5.1-13 is executed is 2019. 

The following table shows the assessment of the state obtained (C0161 water mass, CHJ):

Evaluation of the state of mass C0161 “Port of Alicante” (2019)

Taking this year as reference for follow-up and control, the APA conducts periodical controls of the port waters and sediments, it being set out that the first control cycle is completed in 2021. This cycle belongs to the annual control programme of the 2021-2024 period.