Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Methodology Used for Comparing Two
Locations for the New Lisbon Airport Based
on the Impacts on Surface Water
Ana Estela Barbosa, João Soromenho Rocha, and João Nuno Fernandes
Introduction
Lisbon airport, named Portela, was constructed in 1940 and needs to be replaced
with a more modern and improved infrastructure, to serve future demands. In spite
of the fact that the need of a new airport was foreseen four decades ago, only in
1999 a site was formally chosen. Unexpectedly, a private proposal for an alternative
location for the New Lisbon Airport (NLA) was announced and published in 2007,
starting a public and political discussion about the goodness of the first choice. The
Portuguese Ministry of Public Works, Transportation and Communications com-
missioned the National Laboratory of Civil Engineering (LNEC) to perform a
technical comparison of the two alternative locations for the NLA. The study was
assigned in June 2007, and deserved a major focus of attention from different sec-
tors of the society - politicians, economists, entrepreneurs, academics and the public
in general. LNEC assigned the study to a multidisciplinary team of more than
40 people, including LNEC researchers and consultants from universities and pri-
vate companies, both national and international. The study took into account the
assessment of several environmental, social and economic factors.
This paper presents the study undertaken by the team from LNEC that was
responsible for the comparison of the effects of the NLA on surface water resources
at the two possible locations. More details of the work can be found in reports
published in Portugal
[1, 2]
. Any new urbanization project may have different pro-
posed locations within a country and/or region, each of one serving some specific
social, economical or other objective. The political decision processes concerning
alternative locations of major national infrastructures must take into account,
amongst other factors, the effects of the project in the environment and the cost of
environmental mitigation measures.
