Costa da Caparica’s beachfront development will cost €6.3m
The government is planning a €6.3m intervention on 3.8 km of the coast in Caparica, and expectations are that the project will start being developed this year. Call for tenders start on March 23.
The ministry of the Environment revealed this Friday that it is planning to intervene in the coastal area of Costa da Caparica, a beach area near Lisbon, located in Almada, in the district of Setúbal. The beachfront development project will involve the investment of around €6.3 million, for a reinforcement of a million cubic meters of sand spread through 3.8 km.
In an announcement, the ministry declared that the development will start in Costa de Caparica and go all the way to Cova do Vapor. The sand is expected to be retrieved from Canal Barra Sul, in the entry point of the Tagus estuary.
On the same announcement, the environment bureau of the government noted that the call for tenders will open this Saturday, reaching a total cost of €6.3m, of which €4.1m are to be provided by the Portuguese Environment Agency, €3m should come from the POSEUR fund (operational sustainability programme) and €2.2m from the Administration of the Port of Lisbon.
“The goal of this project is to give people and their properties some more protection in the eventuality that the water levels rise, minimizing, therefore, the negative effects of that phenomena. It also allows us to increase the recreational area of these beaches”, the note showed.
The development of the sandbank will be extended through 3.8km of the coast, and the intervention should last around 60 days, and it is expected to start this year.
The project was approved by the Council of Ministers this Thursday, but it had already been announced on November 27 last year. At the time, the minister for the environment and energetic transitions, João Pedro Matos Fernandes, visited the beach of São João da Caparica. “I’m taking full responsibility for this work, which will bring around one million cubic meters of sand to Costa’s beaches, costing approximately five million euros, not counting the EU funds which will also be applied”, he noted back then.
The city council of Almada, on that same day, signed an agreement with the Portuguese Environment Agency so that there would be a focus on rebuilding the dunes’ ecosystem in São João da Caparica, which was severely affected by storms in the winter of 2017 and the spring of 2018. In that area alone, the minister is planning to spend around “60 thousand euros to recover the dunes”.
