The environmental association Almargem considered this Tuesday that the installation process of an IKEA store is "an insult to Spatial Planning and that the Environmental Impact Study of the project is "of little or nothing." A position disclosed on the day the Public discussion period for the Environmental Impact Study (EIA) of the IKEA Loulé Store and associated shopping centers.
«Throughout the history of the process, Associação Almargem considers that this is another example of how planning should not work, since there was a clear and complete reversal of the normal procedure, overvaluing the alleged public interest of this private project, all of this based on an inexplicable stubbornness of the former executive councilor of Loulé, who bet on favoring this project over other options», consider the Algarve environmentalists.
Almargem argues that the Urbanization Plan of Caliços-Esteval (PUCE) was «made exactly according to the intentions of this project», it can even be said that by its «order», recalling that the PUCE «was expeditiously approved in early 2013 by the Municipality of Loulé, and the project was also recognized by the Government as a PIN (Project of National Interest)».
«Incidentally, this is one of the arguments used by the EIA, which considers that no de-allocation of land in the National Agricultural Reserve (RAN) is in question, since this issue ceased to exist with the conversion of rural to urban land through the expedient of the Caliços-Esteval PU. And with all this, there is already 3 percent of the area of the original RAN in the municipality of Loulé», according to the Algarve association.
Environmentalists consider that in this, as in other cases, there was "a complete subversion of the processes of spatial planning, in the wake of the private interests of a promoter, completely contrary to the norms of the PDMs (which now few seem to be in a hurry to review) and clearly ignoring the public interest'.
"In fact, the Loulé PDM in force includes other areas that are perfectly defined for this type of equipment, a fact which, however, was completely ignored by the previous Loulé executive, having later had the endorsement of official entities with jurisdiction over the matter" , denounces.
Commercial zone projects are a threat…for local businesses
Almargem reviews the installation process of this project in Loulé, which dates back to 2010. During this period, two possible locations for this project were on the table, one in Caliços, target of this EIA, and another in the Franqueada zone ( former brewery) which, 'incidentally, gathered a greater consensus on the part of local economic agents'.
«The Almargem Association continues to consider that these are, in both cases, ecologically unimportant places and even partially disqualified by successive human interventions of a different nature (industrial zones, workshops, intensively exploited orchards)», said the association, noting, even so, that both include “land belonging to the RAN”.
«At the time, the Almargem Association did not support, of course, any of the location options, taking, on the contrary, an unfavorable position to the establishment of more large commercial areas in Loulé and in the Algarve in general, taking into account the negative change in social and consumption habits that it generally entails and the serious impact of small traditional commerce in the surrounding areas», they consider.
«It should be noted that, in addition to IKEA in Caliços, the Franqueada's other aforementioned project is still standing, in addition to a handful of other similar projects», concluded the Algarve environmental association.
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