With an expenditure of more than 4.8 million euros, the municipality of Aljustrel announced that the new environmental recovery project for the old mining area of Aljustrel, in Beja’s district, will proceed in the first half of this year. The project, promoted by the Mining Development Company (c), is "a complementary phase to the hydrological-environmental rehabilitation that has previously been carried out in different interventions”.

The works, which will be co-financed by the Alentejo 2030 regional operating program, have a 12-month execution duration and were presented by EDM to the local government and Secretary of State for Energy, Maria João Pereira.

The intervention will focus on the “confinement of 350,000 cubic meters of contaminated soil and the covering of an area of approximately 120,000 square meters of exposed waste”. At the same time, “a large area of unsuitable soil will be re-naturalised and areas with topographical deficiencies will be modelled”.

After EDM completed four contracts on the site between 2006 and 2015, totalling around 11.9 million euros in investment, the former mining area of Aljustrel is now in a complementary phase of environmental rehabilitation.

The municipality claims that these interventions gave “a new purpose to the abandoned mining areas, safeguarding environmental issues and preserving the heritage structures resulting from mining activity present in the territory” and enabled the creation of the Aljustrel Mining Park, which was officially opened in December 2023.