The Supreme Court anticipates that it is difficult for the mine to prosper because of the protection of the soil
The court annuls a change to the Municipal General Plan (PGM) of urban planning that tried to regulate a recycling company on protected land
Environmental protection cannot be lowered if there is not a general interest and a loss of the values that led to that protection
It is a case similar to that of the mine, which is more relevant, because the urban planning plan was modified to allow industrial use.
The Supreme Court, in a ruling on June 30, annuls the modification of the Municipal General Plan (PGM) for urban planning that was promoted by the city council to regulate a company that has a recycling plant, which is dedicated to the treatment of scrap metal and heavy industrial machinery, which is on land protected by the general plan. The Supreme Court ratifies the ruling of the High Court of Justice of Extremadura and agrees with Adenex's arguments, preventing industrial uses on land that has urban protection. This judicial resolution creates jurisprudence and anticipates that a project such as that of the mine, which needs a modification of the Municipal General Plan, will not have it easy to move forward because it will need a change of the local standard that would be similar to that of Recusoex, the recycling plant.
Regardless of what is done in Valdeflores (where the plan prevents extractive uses and where the company argues that it will reach the site of the site with a tunnel and that therefore it will only affect the subsoil and not the surface and it is not necessary to modify the plan), the mine project contemplates an industrial plant that would be made on land protected by the urban planning plan
Adenex recalled on Tuesday that this recent ruling is based on the same argument that served the Supreme Court to annul the modification of the urban planning plan that eliminated limitations on the installation of photovoltaic plants on Llanos protection ground. That argument is the principle of non-regression, which regulates that the environmental values given to a soil, either by an urban planning plan or by a major protection figure, can only be raised or reduced when the environmental values have ceased to exist or because there are reasons of general interest that are of the first order, a particularly relevant public interest that is accredited.
Adenex stressed on Tuesday that Recusoex's ruling may affect the mine project because the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, both in this case and in that of photovoltaics, is placing a limit, in application of the principle of non-regression, on the ability of administrations to modify the urban planning plan if there is no general interest or a very reasoned justification, and not only Two more are added to this idea. The first is that the Supreme Court prohibits polluting uses for industrial purposes in protected soil. And the second is that the Supreme Court's resolution once again underlines the distance regime that prohibits polluting and harmful activities less than two kilometers from the urban center
