The Sunset Albufeira Sport & Health Resort project, an expansion at the Alfamar hotel site across 95 hectares of agricultural and ecological land, has been rejected by the evaluation Committee of the region's Regional Development Commission, the CCDR-Algarve.
The environmental impact study covering this area of pine-clad clifftops and agricultural land between and inland from the beaches of Falésia and Rocha Baixinha, Albufeira, was given an "unfavourable" opinion.
"With the exception of within the consolidated tourist areas of the Alfamar complex, the new development projects are in conflict with the existing territorial management instruments and are irreparably disregarded by the public interest restrictions of the National Ecological Reserve and the National Agricultural Reserve," reads the summary of the committee's findings.
If the project went ahead, there would be "damage and loss of land in the Quarteira floodplain, a loss of agricultural potential, discontinuity of the floodplain and an increase in land consumption which is not comprehensible in a plan that originally was intended to be sustainable."
As for the much-overused ‘s’ word, “this is a project that is sustainable at the concept level and for employment but unsustainable in terms of its location.”
This major U-turn by the normally pro-development CCDR-A will be welcomed by environmentalists, not least Almargem which was the only NGO to lodge an opinion on the mega-project during the public consultation period.
The CCRD-A's evaluation committee commented that, "the project, for all its technical merit, can not be compatible with the area’s land use model as it reduces and permanently changes the present ecosystems, makes the landscape increasingly artificial and removes the original identity of this promontory between the meadow and the sea."
In August this year, we reported that the developers, Libertas-Investimento Imobiliário and the Sun House group, acknowledged that the territorial management laws "strongly condition, or even restrict, the building of the expanded Sunset Albufeira Sports & Health Resort" but they said that it is "evident" that these instruments are outdated vis-a-vis the current reality, "and that they are under review." Click HERE
In a legal opinion attached to the developer's Environmental Impact Statement, one way to get around the planning restrictions was to have the Albufeira municipal development plan (PDM) and the regional strategic plan, (PROTAL,) altered to accommodate the developers' needs.
The CCDR-A said at the time that the territorial management laws rendered most of project unachievable but suggested that the project would be feasible of these laws were changed.
The developers resubmitted their proposals which immediately were accepted by the CCDR-A which quietly released the project for public discussion - even though the development violated land management and development laws that others have to follow.
The CCDR-A’s evaluation committee has stuck to the land use laws and soundly rejected the development proposal to alter forever another large chunk of coastline, pointing out that this area of the Algarve already is full of agreed projects, such as Lone Star's stalled Vilamoura Lakes and the Quarteira Almargem Lagoon development that has just got the go-ahead.
The inclusion of a rural hotel, a 'farmers club' with a riding centre, organic agricultural production and detached properties with their own vegetable gardens were seen by the committee as interesting but, ultimately just 'sustainable' window dressing for a huge tourism project in the wrong area.
This is an excellent result for those that see the Algarve’s coastline being eaten away, surely but slowly, by large tourism projects that forever change the very landscape that tourists come to enjoy.
