The Public Ministry believes that the largest solar plant in Europea project by Iberdrola and Prosolia in Santiago de Cacém, went over “legal regimes for the protection of natural resources”having challenged the approval that the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) gave to the project.
The news is reported this Sunday by Público, which explains that the MP decided to challenge the Administrative and Fiscal Court of Beja the license granted by APA considering that the entity responsible for assessing the environmental impact ignored “a wide range of territorial management instruments and legal regimes for the protection of natural resources”.
Before the Public Ministry’s initiative, an association of residents of the affected parishes, São Domingos and Vale de Água, had also gone to court with a complaint against the Ministry of the Environment, which oversees the APA, with a view to challenging the environmental impact statement issued in January last year, writes the same newspaper. According to this association, cited by the newspaper, the investment of 800 million euros in solar panels in Santiago do Cacém was approved despite negative opinions from various entitiessuch as the Institute for Nature and Forest Conservation, the National Energy and Geology Laboratory and even the director of the agency’s environmental impact assessment department.
The same association guarantees, says Público, that the energy produced here will be used to supply the data center at the center of the investigation that led to the dismissal of Prime Minister António Costa, in Sines, but Iberdrola guarantees the newspaper that it has not any agreement with Start Campus.
It is recalled that the president of the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA), Nuno Lacastapresented the resignation from the position after being constituted within the scope of Operation Influencer.
