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His name has been criticized for allegedly stating at a council meeting that he did not mind going to live in Bairro Amarelo, in Setúbal, due to the “wonderful view” of this social neighborhood, but the mayor of Almada, Inês de Medeiros, returns to be the center of attention for other reasons. At the chamber meeting that took place this week, the mayor also questioned the conditions in which the company ETC – Terminais Marítimos works, in Porto Brandão, and stressed that she fears the same will happen in the port of Beirut, in Lebanon, remembering the violent explosion that occurred in August in a deposit that stored ammonium nitrate and that created a crater 43 meters deep.
“Two years ago, we held a joint meeting here, with the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage, with Finance, with Tourism and with the Port of Lisbon on the future of ETC. We know the contract ends. We even have many doubts about the legality itself, because it had a license to be water tanks and, for now, they are diesel tanks, ”Inês de Medeiros began by saying about the company that receives, stores and dispatches this fuel. .
“Where were the national entities for civil protection, protection of nature? Where were the Portuguese Environment Agency and the Regional Commission for Coordination and Development and others when they saw this real environmental crime? We all remember what happened in Lebanon and we have diesel facilities there and we don’t know what condition they are in, ”added the mayor.
Questioned by the i, the environmental association Zero guaranteed that it had no “notion” of what “is at stake in that area.” However, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Housing (MIH) told me that “there is no lack of protection in these facilities.”
“It is a facility that assumes extreme relevance in the Port of Lisbon, since it serves the set of ships that commercially use the port, due to the fuel supply capacity, as well as the country, through the fuel exports made through said supply. of marine fuels ”, he began referring to the protection, also highlighting that the tanks never had water storage as a use,“ contrary to what has been expressed, certainly due to expiration ”.
“According to the information collected in the Port of Lisbon, ETC is a facility that was built at the end of the 1970s for cleaning and degassing activity in the Port of Lisbon, that is, tanker trucks that were going to carry out repairs on the Lisnave shipyards ”, advanced the ministry.
In addition, the guardianship reinforced that “these port facilities have a total storage capacity of 55 thousand cubic meters and a mooring dock, complying, due to the nature of the products they handle, the national and international security requirements for this type of products. ”. .
I also tried to contact the Quercus environmental association for further clarification, but did not get a response until press time.
Higher level of danger
According to data published in September 2019 by the Portuguese Environment Agency, ETC – Terminals Marítimos is at a higher level of danger, according to Decree-Law 150/2015, which “establishes the accident prevention regime Serious substances that involve dangerous substances and limit their consequences for human health and the environment, which transposes Directive No. 2012/18 / EU, of the European Parliament and of the Council, of July 4, 2012, on the control of hazards associates. serious accidents with dangerous substances ”. But MIH stressed that, in this sense, the company also “complies with all the security requirements inherent to this type of establishment.”
The accident scene, however, includes several situations, namely fires, explosions, projection of fragments and spillage of substances dangerous to the aquatic environment, as well as the release of contaminated effluents resulting from the extinguishing of fires.
However, according to the External Emergency Plan that was signed in 2012, there are no homes within 400 meters of the ETC – Maritime Terminals facilities – only a Transtejo restaurant and transport area, about 430 meters away.
