The Portuguese Environment Agency failed the changes that the AVAN Norte consortium wanted to make to the high-speed line, namely changing the Gaia station and building two bridges, according to a decision to which Lusa had access.
According to the Decision on the Environmental Conformity of the Execution Project (DCAPE), the APA ruled on the “non-environmental compliance of the execution project for the STA4 and STA5 subsections”, between Espinho and Porto, but for the compliance of the sections to the south (Oiã, municipality of Oliveira do Bairro), “conditional on compliance with the conditions set out in this decision”.
Thus, APA rejects the changes that the AVAN Norte consortium (Mota-Engil, Teixeira Duarte, Alves Ribeiro, Casais, Conduril and Gabriel Couto) wanted to make to the route, especially in the municipalities of Vila Nova de Gaia and Porto, in view of what it had signed in the contract with Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP), namely the relocation of the station from Gaia de Santo Ovídio to Vilar do Paraíso and the construction of two bridges instead of a bus station over the Douro River.
The APA also denied the consortium’s intentions to build less of the tunnel and, of what would remain of it under Vila Nova de Gaia, at a higher level than initially planned, something that would lead to more demolitions on the surface (136 demolitions planned in Gaia and Porto, of which 109 homes and 27 companies).
The agency states that “the Execution Project introduced, compared to what was recommended in the Preliminary Study, a set of changes in particularly structuring elements of the project and which were assumed to be decisive in the overall balance and in the foundations of the DIA [Declaração de Impacto Ambiental] issued”.
The APA states that the AVAN Norte consortium considered the tunnels and the depth of the station to be “highly limiting” aspects, as well as “security risks of the work, its temporal aspects and the risks of non-compliance with deadlines” and alleged “difficulties in the licensing phase by competent authorities, such as ANEPC [Autoridade Nacional de Emergência e Proteção Civil] and local authorities”.
“These arguments, when invoked to justify the presentation, in the Execution Project, of a solution different from that previously evaluated, call into question the technical feasibility of the Preliminary Study”, says the APA, so “if this viability is in question, this would also call into question the DIA issued, leaving there no longer even a basis for the present verification of the environmental compliance of the Execution Project”.
However, for the APA, “it is considered that this will not be the case, given what was stated by IP in its capacity as granting entity and taking into account that none of the competent authorities invoked by the proponent issued an unfavorable statement or highlighted any difficulty with the solution presented in the Preliminary Study”.
The APA also states that, in the project’s public consultation, “259 submissions were received, mostly critical of the Execution Project. The main issue raised was the alleged non-compliance with the Preliminary Study and the DIA, due to significant changes to the Preliminary Study, such as the change in the location of the station from Vila Nova de Gaia de Santo Ovídio (underground and intermodal) to Vilar do Paraíso/Laborim (surface), the reduction in the length of tunnels and the replacement of the single bridge over the Douro by two independent bridges, railway and road”.
“These changes are seen as contrary to the specifications submitted to the competition and raise legal and transparency doubts in the respective competitive process”, highlights the APA.