Montijo Airport: Francisco Guerreiro wants to know if a SEA will really go ahead

Lisbon, 11 November 2020 - MEP Francisco Guerreiro (Greens/EFA) questioned the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) about the possibility of a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) for Montijo Airport. This possibility was admitted by the Minister of Infrastructure last week in Parliament, during the discussion of the 2021 State Budget.

‘We were very satisfied with the possibility put forward by the Minister, because the SEA is a mandatory instrument, taking into account the premises of national and European law. From the information provided, it is easy to see that several aspects were insufficiently analyzed and some were even ignored, which makes it impossible to correctly and sustainably adopt environmentally sustainable decisions. The Environmental Impact Study (EIA) disregarded any relevant climatic and environmental impacts, it didn’t estimate the size of greenhouse gas emissions from flights associated with the new airport, in addition to the fact that the location is adjacent to the Special Protection Area of the Tagus Estuary and the Special Area of Conservation – Tagus Estuary Site,' says Francisco Guerreiro.

In addition to these issues, in a letter sent to the President of the APA the MEP also mentioned harmful consequences for human health, such as increased noise and air pollution; as well as the downplaying of the inability of the runway to receive certain models of aircraft.

On the other hand, the assessment already carried out also shows an omission regarding the issue of light pollution. ‘Portugal has a serious light pollution issue, being the European country with the most illumination per inhabitant and per square meter. The most recent global studies on the issue of light pollution reveal that no citizen in mainland Portugal lives in a place free from light pollution and Portugal is the country in Europe with the highest levels of radiance emission per thousand inhabitants,’ says Francisco Guerreiro.

In addition to all this, the MEP recalls that ‘there are profuse criticisms made by technicians/experts regarding the content of the EIA for Montijo airport, considering that it has calculation errors and does not include the risks of rising sea levels. One of the experts even explains that the EIA omits more extreme projections and underestimates the magnitude of the risks of sea level rise and its impacts on the project, pointing out the existence of calculation errors in the variables used. In an extreme situation, if the tide rises to 4.17 meters, some 1.6 kilometers of the air base could be submerged, including 400 meters of the current runway.’

The final decision to build the new airport in Montijo was taken in 2019. That year, the Government signed an agreement with ANA- Aeroportos de Portugal to expand the airport capacity of Lisbon, with a planned investment of 1.15 billion Euros until 2028.

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