The coastline of the municipality of Loulé will benefit from an investment of over €14 million to artificially nourish some beaches, announced the Minister of Environment and Energy, Maria da Graça Carvalho, during a visit to the Algarve last week.
Speaking to journalists near Praia do Forte Novo, in the parish of Quarteira, a beach area hit by severe weather last winter that washed away part of the sand, the government official stated that sand replenishment work will be carried out over a 6.5 km stretch between Quarteira and Quinta do Lago, passing through Vale do Lobo and Garrão.
This project has been in development for several years but will finally come to fruition. “There’s a huge lack of sand here; the boardwalks have receded several metres this winter, so this is a major project,” the minister emphasised, adding that the total cost of the project is €14.3 million.
The tender will open soon, as the funding has already been approved, and construction should begin shortly after the bathing season, the government official added. The work will take “four to five months”, and it is expected that the project will be completed by the time the 2026 bathing season begins. This will be “the largest project of its kind in the Algarve.”
Regarding work on existing piers, the environmental impact study is already being finalised. It will constitute an intervention aimed at preventing sand depletion (or, practically, its disappearance) from recurring. This investment will be submitted to the Sustainable Operational Programme, which also funds the sand restoration work. It could begin at the end of the 2026 bathing season, ensuring that this project will also be completed by 2027.
The intervention will involve “removing some of the piers and adding to the remaining ones; it’s a different geometry so that the sand doesn’t wash away again,” said Maria da Graça Carvalho.
It’s worth noting that another planned intervention for the Loulé coastline is the renaturalisation of Ancão Beach.
The minister also addressed an issue that has been of concern to the local municipal executive: the issue of acquired rights to a plot of land dating back to the 1970s for building a hotel in the heart of the Foz do Almargem e Trafal Nature Reserve.
The minister announced that she has already instructed APA (the Portuguese Environment Agency) to carry out an environmental impact assessment for this project “to verify all conditions”, as in similar cases. This was not previously foreseen, as at the time environmental and climate change concerns were very different.
In this sense, from an environmental point of view, APA will have the authority to approve or reject urban development projects according to today’s regulations.
This issue has received particular attention from the Municipality of Loulé. “Conditioned by legal privileges and a lack of tools to make changes”, Mayor Vítor Aleixo believes that the legislator will have to look at the many plots of land that exist in coastal areas of great environmental sensitivity.
“I wouldn’t have built this hotel, but we live in a constitutional state, and everything starts with the legislator. Either policies are put in place to curb true aberrations, or we will continue to passively witness the aggression against nature and the destruction of biodiversity,” added Vítor Aleixo.
