Environmental organizations take legal action against fake Environmental Assessment Strategy

Today, December 14th, ends the presentation of proposals in the IMT's contest to commission a Strategic Environmental Assessment on the airport solution for the Lisbon region.

The choice of a less than strategic and very conditioned environmental assessment for the new airport leads environmental organizations SPEA, Almargem, ANP|WWF, A Rocha, FAPAS, GEOTA, LPN and ZERO and ClientEarth to communicate to the Court their contestation of the adopted Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), for its uselessness, illegality and for not serving the interests of the country.

The eight Portuguese environmental organizations that took the Portuguese government to court to stop the construction project of Montijo Airport, will present their position on the uselessness and illegality of the Strategic Environmental Assessment, as it is planned by the government, in the lawsuit, which is in progress at the Administrative Court of Lisbon. SPEA, Almargem, ANP|WWF, A Rocha, FAPAS, GEOTA, LPN and ZERO, with the support of the international NGO of environmental law ClientEarth, consider that the public tender for the Strategic Environmental Assessment, and the SEA itself, are illegal and will not be able to change the grounds of the administrative action because it is not a true SEA and does not carry out a true study of the alternatives.

The Institute of Mobility and Transport (IMT) was recently authorized to assume multi-annual charges for commissioning a Strategic Environmental Assessment on the airport solution for the Lisbon region, keeping the duty of assessment and control arising from the procedure until its completion. However, according to information in the tender's specifications, the government has determined that the study should compare only three solutions: Lisbon + Montijo, Montijo + Lisbon, and Alcochete. This prior decision to limit the alternatives without considering other strategic visions of the future and perspectives for development, which should be defined during the preparation of the SEA and not a priori, pollutes the process and removes its SEA character. Added to this is the fact that two of the solutions concern the use of Air Base No. 6 in Montijo, a location considered unfeasible from the environmental point of view and not very strategic because it does not allow integration with the rail modal.

Considering the course of recent events, from the Environmental Impact Declaration based on an incomplete, ill-considered and biased Environmental Impact Study, with the Public Prosecutor still concluding that it is invalid, to the announcement of the Strategic Environmental Assessment limited a priori in its scope and objective, these Portuguese environmental protection organizations are now communicating to the Administrative Court of Lisbon, the information that the Government has announced a public tender for the realization of a conditioned and limited assessment, and therefore illegal, that can in no way alter the grounds for administrative action, since it is not a true SEA and does not carry out a true study of the alternatives, concluding in an assessment that, regardless of its result, will be illegitimate. In other words, public money (2.5 million euros) is spent on a pseudo-evaluation that in the end will not serve to indicate the best alternative.