Moita council has gone through the fine print of the environmental impact study (EIA) on government plans to transform Montijo airbase into a busy passenger terminal and decided the risks involved are ‘just not worth it’.
Citing the existence of ‘much more favourable’ local alternatives for an airport taking up to 38 planes an hour, the Communist-led council explains that the plan brings “real risks for public health due to the elevated exposure of the population to noise and the concentrations of pollutants in the air, which go against all World Health Organisation directives”.
Earlier in the month, other councils which will be affected by the plan – Barreiro and Montijo, both held by PS Socialists – gave the thumbs-up to the EIA, saying they believed a new passenger terminal would “dynamise” the south bank area below Lisbon.
Tomorrow, the public consultation period draws to a close.
Nuno Lacasta, president of environmental agency APA that will ultimately decide whether or not to allow the project through stressed he won’t be swayed by the government’s insistence that there is no Plan B (click here).
Meantime, Moita’s thumbs-down includes all the ‘old arguments’ (like the heightened risk of collision with birds using the nearby marshland areas) and some more ‘local cultural’ ones: like the ‘risks to strategic assets of the borough’, including river navigability and effects on traditional boats of the Tejo which are in the process of candidating for UNESCO intangible heritage status.
As to the ‘urgency’ forever stressed by powermakers (click here), Moita’s CDU mayor Rui Garcia says “it’s not acceptable” that “outlying, disadvantaged areas should suffer negative impacts” that the airport will bring “without any kind of advantages” in order to bring yet more growth for the inner city of Lisbon.
