Quercus today warned that the location of the new Lisbon airport puts at risk the Iberian Peninsula’s largest aquifer and the water supply to the Setúbal district, and reinforced the need for a rigorous environmental assessment.
In a statement, the association expresses “deep concern” about the technical report on the new airport in the Lisbon region, released this week, arguing that it should be “analyzed with the utmost scientific rigor and subjected to broad public scrutiny, taking into account the significant environmental, territorial and climatic impacts involved.”
The proximity to the aquifer, which is strategically important for ensuring the water supply to a large portion of the population in the Setúbal district, is one of the aspects that most worries Quercus about the location of the new airport.
Any intervention that compromises the quality or availability of the aquifer may have “very serious consequences for the region’s water security,” warns Quercus, recalling environmental risks such as habitat destruction, increased noise and atmospheric emissions, and effects on the landscape and biodiversity.
In the Alcochete case, it considers that the solution continues to raise serious environmental concerns due to the potential impacts of the airport on natural values of high ecological relevance.
The new airport entails a profound alteration of natural topography, soil morphology, and the functioning of existing ecosystems, it stresses, recalling also that the planned diversion of the Ribeira do Vale Cobrão could compromise the ecological balance of the watershed and the operational safety of the airport itself and the future rail link.
Quercus continues to advocate the use of Beja Airport during the transition period until the construction of the new airport, and a strategy of replacing short-haul flights with rail connections whenever possible.
The decision about the new airport requires a particularly rigorous environmental assessment, a truly informed public discussion process, and a serious consideration of the ecological, social, economic and climatic costs associated with the chosen solution, it states.
Also the environmental association Zero warned about the need for the advancement of the new Lisbon airport and associated infrastructures to follow a technically robust, transparent and participatory environmental assessment process, while maintaining strong reservations about the environmental viability of expanding the current airport.
