Tirso Leal, Councilor for Urban Planning: "One way or another we are going to develop new industrial land in Cáceres"
Q: -This year the mining company will present the exploitation request to the Board, how do you explain that now the underground deposit project is not incompatible with the urban planning plan with the criterion that if it is not expressly prohibited it can be consider what is authorizable?
A: -The company's first project was a surface exploitation on environmentally protected land, for which they presented a proposal to modify the general plan. The city council had the ability to decide and it was rejected. What is now presented to the city council is not even a complete project, but rather the part with the urban planning effects of the project. The project will be part of the exploitation request. According to what has been presented here, the technicians understand that it is not incompatible because there has been a legislative variation, of the land law of Extremadura, which was modified in 2020 and that in its second transitional provision says that in rural land everything What is prohibited has to be nominally prohibited, generic prohibitions do not apply, what is not expressly prohibited cannot be prohibited. The report of our technicians understands that from what has been presented it is not incompatible, although they establish very clearly that they leave the decision of whether it is incompatible or not to a higher hierarchical criterion because it will be in the Board where the complete project is presented.
Q: -My impression is that with this report of non-incompatibility with the urban planning plan, what the city council is doing is getting out of the way so that the project can be processed in the Board and not stopping it definitively. Has it gotten out of the way? City Hall?
A: -No. As I have told you before, the complete project is not known here and this is reflected by the technicians in their report when they say that it is up to higher hierarchical criteria whether or not to approve the project. To give an example, although it is not comparable, it is like when you present a basic project, you can be granted an urban planning license, but it does not give you the right to build, for this you must present the execution project, which here at the city council does not go away. to present.
Q: -However, when the company presents its project to the Board, the city council will have to report.
A: -Evidently, if they have to request a construction license it will be decided according to the Board's reports and the execution conditions that they present to us. Here we are not throwing balls out for the Board to decide, here we will also have something to say, but for that we first have to know what the conditions are.
Q: -There may be doubts with the regulation of subsoil uses, but how is it considered that the implementation of an industry, with its stockpiles of waste and waste, on a piece of land, together with the urban planning plan, is not incompatible with the urban planning plan? to the Miajadas road, which is not protected for development?
A: -Because in the area where they plan to locate the first mineral processing plant, the general plan allows extractive activities that include research work, extraction and a first transformation, which is what has been presented to us here. As for sterile waste, ponds..., it will have to be the environmental body of the Board that determines whether it complies or not. Here we do not know if there will be a waste collection of three meters or ninety meters, we do not know because the complete project has not been presented.
Q: -But, due to the type of activity that is proposed, it is not only a first treatment of the mineral, but an industrial production.
A: -What has come to us here is a first transformation. When the complete project is presented, it will be seen if it is really a first transformation or if it involves more.
