UDCB Association expresses total rejection of the Barroso mine RECAP

A u.S. Barroso Covas Defense (UDCB) association today expressed its “total rejection” to the Barroso mine RECAPE for being a “failed attempt” to correct the Environmental Impact Declaration (IAI) issued in 2023.

The Environmental Compliance Report of the Barroso Mine Executive Project (RECAPE), which Savannah wants to explore in Covas do Barroso, in the municipality of Boticas, is in public consultation between today and December 4.

By 4:30 p.m. today, the first day of public consultation, 1,432 online participations had already been submitted through the Participate portal.

“This RECAPE is dead at birth. Trying to use a compliance procedure to whiten a DIA that has scientific flaws, which was challenged by the prosecutor, is an insult to the population of Covas do Barroso. The Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) is trying to do the work of Environmental Impact Assessment a posteriori, throwing risks at communities and justice ", said, quoted in a statement, Nélson Gomes, president of UDCB.

The Barroso mine was made possible by the APA, with the issue of a favorable DIA conditional in 2023, and RECAPE is a document that intends to demonstrate compliance with the conditions laid down in the DIA.

Savannah Resources intends to start construction in 2027 and achieve the first production in 2028.

In the statement, UDCB expressed its “total rejection” of the RECAPE procedure for the Barroso mine project,” considering that this “process is nothing more than a failed attempt to reverse and artificially correct a DIA with serious scientific and legal gaps”.

The association that has been fighting mining for eight years criticised what it considered to be the “resource to administrative instruments to impose a project rejected by the people and challenged in justice”.

RECAPE, he explained, “serves exclusively to verify that the implementation project complies with previous conditions, and never to determine primarily whether the fundamental risks of a project are acceptable.”.

“ In 2023, the APA issued a conditional favorable DIA despite referring to later stages essential studies on water resources, air quality, noise, waste and biodiversity. Thus creating a logic of ‘approving first and evaluating later’ by inverting its legal burden’, UDCB said, considering that “the deficiencies of environmental assessment have been repeatedly pointed out by independent experts”.

The mining project has been challenged in justice, more recently the administrative servitude granted by the State that allows Savannah to enter private land and waste for research and exploration work, but without decisions favorable to opponents of the mine so far.

The Barroso mine was also classified as a European strategic project.

“ A public consultation in RECAPE cannot remedy failures that violated the law and compromised the participation of citizens ", defended UDCB.