The Minister of Transport, Oscar Puente, confirmed this morning that the Government will approve the expansion of the Port of Valencia on Tuesday at the next Council of Ministers. After visiting the facilities of this infrastructure, he defended that the project is "100% sustainable" and will serve "to transfer the containers to the train." "The northern terminal has the largest railway terminal. We will take out trucks that affect the environment and will help us in the decarbonization process. It is a great public-private investment and we cannot waste it," stated the Minister of Transport on his first visit to Valencia. .
Aware that the expansion has the rejection of his Sumar partners in the Government, Puente wanted to emphasize that it is "an ecological project" and has insisted that it is not only a port operation, but also a railway one.
Puente's announcement resolves the expectation that had been generated around the Government's decision for a project that had the support of the PP and PSOE but was opposed by Compromís and Podemos, as well as the leader of Sumar, Yolanda Díaz, that on Tuesday he met with those responsible for the association that opposes the expansion. In fact, Compromís does not rule out taking the project to court.
The approval of the expansion will mean activating a public-private investment of more than 1,500 million euros that should make it possible to convert this powerful logistics node into the most important entry route for goods in the Mediterranean.
The Port of Valencia designed a northern expansion in 2006 that required the construction of breakwaters, docks to accommodate containers and an investment in access to the port. The total cost of the infrastructure would be around 1.2 billion euros and it received a favorable Environmental Impact Declaration (DIA) in 2007: the work was not going to affect the beaches in the south of the city or in La Albufera. Until 2012, only the dams were built. The rest was left in the drawer due to the economic crisis and it was not until 2018 when the bidding document for the new container terminal, the port's fourth, was resumed and approved.
The Port Authority, which recently changed its president, in September 2019 awarded the construction and management to the company Terminal Investment Ltd. (TIL), a subsidiary of the MSC group, which will cost 1,021 million of the total work. Another 542.7 million euros must be provided by the State. The port technicians, as well as the Valencian employers' associations, assess that with this expansion there would be capacity to accommodate five million more containers in an area of 137 hectares and 1,700 meters of docking line, an automatic and low-emission terminal that would entail contracting of half a thousand dockworkers.
It would be, in logistical terms, the largest hub in the Mediterranean for international trade, with the largest port for interoceanic container traffic, with the capacity to compete directly against others such as Barcelona, which it already surpasses in the number of containers, and Marseilles. MSC, the company involved, made a modification to the project to locate the terminal not in the internal waters of the breakwater, but in the northern part, thus favoring the arrival of larger and less mobile ships. Compromís, and the former mayor of València, Joan Ribó, with the support of Podemos, were radically opposed and demanded a new EIS to adapt it to the 2013 environmental legislation.
Puertos del Estado made a report in favor of the expansion in March 2021, but left it up to the Port Authority of Valencia to "issue a certification that the project does not require undergoing a new environmental procedure." The Ministry of Ecological Transition granted the Port Authority the status of "substantive body" in the expansion project and, therefore, the ability to decide whether or not to subject it to environmental evaluation. This decision was judicialized by the citizen platform Comissió Ciutat-Port and caused the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid to suspend it as a precautionary measure, once again complicating the decision of the Council of Ministers.
In addition to the political and institutional aspect, there is a second front of battle that can complicate the expansion of the Port: social activism. The First Section of the Administrative Litigation Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community (TSJCV) declared "null and void" both the special plan for the logistics activities zone (ZAL) of the port of Valencia and the resolution of the Department of Housing, Public Works and Territorial Structure of December 17, 2018 with which it was approved.
The ruling, dated July 6, responds to an appeal presented by the Per l'Horta collective on behalf of the Horta és futur platform, No a la ZAL, and joins the annulment resolution already issued by the Valencian high court in March in response to the appeal presented by the neighborhood association La Unificadora de la Punta. Judicializing the expansion of the Port of Valencia could also be a brake on the Port Authority's objective.
(((There will be an extension)))
