Rio’s undersecretaries are accused of environmental crime – 11/07/2023 – Environment

The Federal Public Ministry filed a complaint against four Rio de Janeiro City Hall employees on charges of granting an illegal environmental license for the execution of a project that installed a concrete material at the bottom of the sand on Barra da Tijuca beach, in the west zone of the city. .

Among the accused are two undersecretaries of the Municipal Secretariat for Economic Development and Simplification, Paulo César da Silva and Thiago Ramos Dias, and the Environmental Licensing coordinator, Lúcia Maria Pinto Vetter.

According to the Attorney General’s Office, the three issued an environmental license “hastily” after the MPF was notified about the case, when the work was already underway.

In a statement, the Municipal Department of Urban and Economic Development stated that employees were not notified. “If necessary, they will provide all clarifications,” said the ministry.

The work that began at the end of last year aimed to reduce the effects of hangovers, mainly on the boardwalk and in kiosks along the waterfront. Experts from UFRJ, Uerj, UFF and PUC-Rio organized a petition pointing out the risk that the movement could, in fact, increase future damage.

The installation of the material was suspended in February after notification from the MPF. The municipality formally abandoned the work in March.

According to the Attorney’s Office, the preliminary municipal license for installation, issued by the Subsecretariat for Environmental Control and Licensing, was only issued on January 19 of this year, the day following the notification made by the Attorney’s Office to the municipality to present the environmental licensing for the work.

“The administrative process was intentionally ‘run over’ by the accused Lúcia, Thiago and Paulo César, who, in a few hours, removed the process from the competent server, modified the nature of the request and the procedure, and produced a ‘technical’ opinion addict and an environmental installation license (which had not been requested), to give the appearance of legality to a municipal public project that caused enormous damage to Barra da Tijuca beach, which was being carried out without any license”, states attorney Sérgio Suiama in complaint.

The prosecutor also saw a crime in the conduct of the municipal secretary of Infrastructure, Jessick Trairi, and others for installing the construction site on the beach without a license. As the law provides for a lower penalty, the MPF offered those investigated the possibility of paying a fine of R$10,000 to R$70,000, depending on the case.

The installation of the material on the sand strip was scheduled for seven points in Barra da Tijuca — a 1.2 km stretch between stations 3 and 8 — and had a completion deadline of six months. Only one of the points had actually been carried out before the suspension in February.

The R$10.6 million contract also included the implementation of restinga vegetation and the restructuring of damaged sidewalks and pavements.

When communicating the cancellation of the project to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the municipality stated that “it began carrying out this work because that public space had suffered degradation, especially the public sidewalk, which could evolve into a collapse of such magnitude that it would impede the coming and going of people on the bike path and on the carriageway”.

“The work did not intend to modify the strip of sand, on the contrary, to reestablish the sidewalk in its original limit in the sections where it had already been demolished. In other words, these were small and localized interventions, dimensioned and technically based in accordance with the contracted executive project.”

According to the city hall, the work included the installation of articulated mattresses made of concrete and a geotextile blanket filled with sand from the beach itself to stabilize the site.