“There was an injunction filed [in July]. The reason was they considered the public consultation period too short. The Portuguese Environment Agency (APA), with the help of Águas do Algarve, responded, and the Court ruled in favor of the APA,” Maria da Graça Carvalho told Lusa.
The injunction was filed last July by associations linked to the Sustainable Water Platform, contesting the duration and conditions of the public consultation for the Environmental Compliance Report of the Execution Project (RECAPE), citing “lack of transparency and insufficient time to review the documentation,” considering it a “violation of the right to citizen participation.”
Following the action, the Administrative Court of Loulé ordered the suspension of the ongoing public consultation period, but the APA contested the injunction.
The court decision in favor of the APA, accessed by Lusa and signed by Judge Diogo Pereira Santos, states that the injunction was dismissed “for lack of instrumentality.”
According to the Minister of Environment and Energy, this decision allows “the project timeline to remain as planned,” deemed strategic to enhance the region’s water resilience.
The Environment Minister confirmed that the project would proceed as scheduled: “The public consultation will be open. I believe for two or three days. Then there is the final decision based on the public consultation, and immediately afterwards, the construction can begin.”
“Congratulations to the APA and Águas do Algarve for their well-formulated response to the injunction,” Maria da Graça Carvalho concluded.
The desalination plant construction, located in the municipality of Albufeira, is part of the Algarve Regional Water Efficiency Plan and represents an investment of over 100 million euros, financed by the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR).
The facility will have an initial production capacity of 16 million cubic meters of water per year, expandable to 24 million, and is expected to be completed by the end of 2026.
