Court annuls environmental impact statement for Pisão dam

Environmentalists have won a resounding victory in persuading Castelo Branco administrative and fiscal that the plan to construct the Pisão dam “would be catastrophic” for biodiversity and go against both national and EU legislation. The dam project, which goes back years, involves flooding 700 hectares of land “of great importance”, argued several environmental associations, which say this decision has been crucial to their crusade against the dam. A source for the Intermunicipal Community of the Alto Alentejo has intimated however that authorities still believe it is in the public interest to construct this dam, thus there may well be an appeal. For now, whatever happens, the project (which would have benefited from €141 million of EU Plan for Recovery and Resilience funding) has been stymied.