The central government analyzes the Altri project to install a macrocellulose in the geographical heart of Galicia “as analyzes any other,” said Industry Minister Jordi Hereu on Wednesday. He answered a BNG question, which only one day before claimed that support for the initiative by the Pedro Sánchez Executive is a red line for the nationalists. Hereu maintained ambiguity and raised in “Environmental Technical Criteria” so as not to reveal his political opinion about a pastel that has aroused a huge neighborhood and environmental response in the community and the support until now enthusiastic of the Galician government.
The Environmental Impact Declaration that Alfonso Rueda’s Xunta approved last week has not influenced the considerations of the Sánchez Cabinet. It is a document “more than doubtful, signed by a general director linked to the cellulose lobby,” denounced Nestor Rego, BNG deputy in the Cortes. He referred to the Environmental Head of the Department of the Environment, María José Echevarría, whose husband is a high manager of Ence, a company that owns another cellulose discussed, which is located in the estuary of Pontevedra since the 60s.
The Industry Minister assured that the aforementioned statement is “independent” of the granting of aid linked to the detization of the Discarbonization, which is the one who opts for the Altri project. “It is an open process of competitive concurrence, now in the evaluation phase by the Technical Commission, always in attention to the Spanish and European regulations,” was all that Hereu said in his first response shift.
Given the disappointment of Rego -“There are no longer ambiguities, it is industrial Franco, an enclave and polluting factory, a red line in the BNG relationship with his government” -, the minister went a little further and replied some of the arguments that the socialist party of Galicia usually slides, whose opinion has not been completely blunt until now. “It is true that when the project was announced, there was talk of a sustainable textile fiber factory for years and we have now found important differences,” he said, “now most of the production will be cellulose.” He also pointed out that the location chosen by Altri “is an environment with high landscape, river and environmental values.”
The position of the Ministry of Industry is analogous to that of the Department for Ecological Transition. To questions from eldiario.es, sources of the same argue that “at the moment” they will not say anything about Altri. The macrocellulose would occupy 366 hectares on a plot in Palas de Rei (A Ulloa, Lugo), would consume 1.2 million tons of eucalyptus every year and every day 46,000 cubic meters of water extracted from the Ulla river to relatively a few kilometers of its birth -it will lead to the 30,000 river channel, but at most 3 degrees more temperature. It would produce 400,000 tons per year of soluble cellulose and 200,000 Lyocell. Although Núñez Feijóo, president of the community when the plan was made public, spoke of 2,500 jobs, currently the forecasts do not reach 500.
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