Why four environmental groups want Portugal's newest dam tender stopped
ZERO, GEOTA, LPN and ClimaAção Centro are demanding the Girabolhos tender on the Mondego be suspended pending a public viability study. Their sharpest objection is that one agency holds five roles at once.
The tender for the Girabolhos dam on the river Mondego was launched on 15 July at a ceremony in Gouveia led by the Minister for Environment and Energy, Maria da Graça Carvalho. Three weeks on, four environmental groups want it stopped.
ZERO, GEOTA, the League for the Protection of Nature and ClimaAção Centro are calling for immediate suspension of the procedure, and have opened a public petition to that end. They cite technical, economic and legal failings.
The core objection
The government intends to concession the project for 65 years. The groups argue that is a long time to commit to a scheme with heavy environmental and financial consequences without having shown it is the best answer for water management in the Mondego basin, and without any public study backing its economic case.
Their argument is not that the basin needs no intervention. It is that the decision to build a dam was taken before the alternatives were laid out and compared in the open.
The conflict-of-roles argument
There is a second, more institutional line of attack. ZERO points out that the Portuguese Environment Agency simultaneously acts as contracting authority, payment beneficiary, environmental impact assessment authority, licensing body and appeals instance in the same process.
Put plainly: the same agency runs the tender, assesses the environmental impact of what it has tendered, licenses it, and rules on appeals brought against its own decisions. The groups consider that concentration incompatible with independent scrutiny.
The government’s case
At the launch, the minister described the future dam as essential and strategic infrastructure with three stated purposes: securing water supply, generating and storing energy, and helping control flooding in the Lower Mondego.
The energy storage argument has gained force this year, in a grid where solar has become Portugal’s largest source of electricity and where banking output for the hours after sundown has become the central problem.
The groups’ full position, and the petition, are published on the ZERO website. The tender, for now, remains open.
Image: Alexkom000 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0). An existing dam on the Mondego, not the Girabolhos site
