The environmental association Alambi, from Alenquer, warned about the non-compliance with the environmental plans of the quarries existing in this municipality in the Lisbon district, which explains the spread of dust near population clusters.
“Entities have to be more demanding in ensuring compliance with environmental impact studies and with the mining plans,” said the president of Alambi, Francisco Henriques, to the Lusa agency.
The official explained that there are quarries using rock crushers without hoods or bag filters or without watering the roads and their internal circuits, as stipulated by the Environmental Impact Declarations, thereby disobeying the environmental impact study and the mining plan.
For this reason, the locality of Cheganças is “affected by huge clouds of dust,” which “sometimes extend as far as Camarnal.”
“In day-to-day reality, only extraction matters,” emphasised Alambi.
The cutting of a municipal road, between the localities of Carapinha and Ota, since 2018, soon after the deadly Borba accident, is, according to Alambi, proof that the mining plans are not respected “and stone extraction comes close to the roads, to the point of forcing their closure so that no more accidents like the Borba one occur.”
According to Alambi, there are four to five larger quarries in the municipality of Alenquer, occupying an extraction area of about 300 hectares.
