Decision of the Committee of Ministers supports the work of regional universities in Las Salinas

dr michael SeegerUSM academic, who is part of the Committee of Sanitation Experts who participated in the land bioremefiation project, specified that after this step progress is being made in this “environmental debt that Viña del Mar has.”

As a “robust and serious” endorsement of the work carried out by the regional universities in the bioremediation project of the Las Salinas pane, in Viña del Mar, described the academic of the Department of Chemistry and director of the Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology and Environmental Biotechnology of the Universidad Santa María (USM), Dr. Michael Seeger, the decision made earlier this week by the Committee of Ministers that validated the Environmental Qualification Resolution (RCA) for the sanitation of the land located in front of the shoreline of Ciudad Jardín.

The USM researcher is part of the Committee of Experts on Sanitation (CES) that since 2015 has been working on the diagnosis and subsequent project that will be implemented to clean the space that covers a total of 16 hectares, a group of which they are also a part. scientists from the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso (PUCV) and the University of Playa Ancha (UPLA).

Dr. Michael Seeger stated in relation to the initiative that “it is a pioneering project both due to its size and because it is located in the urban center and heart of Viña del Mar, a strategic place that the city should recover and environmental sanitation is essential. the way you have to achieve it”.

He added that “the decision of the Committee of Ministers to approve the RCA seems to me to be encouraging news and one more step to be able to advance in the process of environmental sanitation of the Las Salinas cloth, an environmental debt that Viña del Mar has”, indicating that They have gone through several steps, one of the most important being “when the proposal for environmental sanitation of the site was approved in 2020, presented by the Las Salinas Real Estate company, which was advised by scientists from the Federico Santa María Technical University, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. and University of Playa Anchia”.

It should be noted that, after that resolution, more than twenty appeals were filed by various entities that were against the RCA, which were finally dismissed by the Committee of Ministers made up of the ministerial secretariats of the Environment, Health , Economy, Agriculture, Energy and Mining, which put some extra recommendations for sanitation.

NEXT STEPS

Regarding the next steps, Dr. Michael Seeger explained that “the researchers who are associated with the project will continue to optimize the processes. Now comes a stage of dialogue that opens between the company, the local authorities and the municipality of Viñamarina to see how the sanitation project will be implemented, therefore, the work on the ground as such will take a while longer (…) being a company international company with experience in bioremediation that will carry out the works”.

BIOREMEDIATION

Bioremediation is a sustainable process in which microorganisms are used to decontaminate a contaminated site or matrix, “in this case they are petroleum hydrocarbons,” Seeger said, so “there are bacteria that are capable of degrading this type of contaminant, metabolizing the compounds (…) Two general strategies were proposed: on the one hand, the microorganisms present in the site will be used, to which biostimulation will be provided through nutrients so that these microbial communities can degrade hydrocarbons and only in soils where they do not decontamination is achieved, bioaugmentation is being considered, where native bacteria that have been cultivated in the laboratory will be added, which will be inoculated on site to speed up the sanitation process.”