ARCHIVED - 67 million euro Portmán Bay Regeneration adjudication annulled

The bidding process has been compromised

Theres no such thing as a final chapter until the binding has gone on the book, and those who had pencilled in "And they all lived happily ever after " into their copy of "The Battle to regenerate Portman Bay" have to start a new chapter, after a new and surprising twist to the story.


The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment has today issued a press statement confirming its commitment to the project to regenerate Portmán Bay, following a disclosure that the bids process used for determining the contracts issued for the regeneration project has been compromised.

The Ministry has said that it intends to adjudicate a new bidding round, in order to ensure that the contractual processes are totally open, transparent and fought on a completely fair basis.

The announcement comes following the disclosure that two of the bids presented for the contract had mysteriously "vanished" when the bids were presented, then "re-appeared" at a later date.
The implication being reported in the media today is that an employee of the Ministry, a person closely linked to the project, had deliberately "misplaced" competitive bids in order to ensure that the contract was awarded to a specific company, but the Ministry is refusing to comment on this element of the allegations made or the allegations that police were involved in the investigations, and has simply commented that no employees of its department have been sacked.

It does, however, accept that there have been irregularities during the adjudication process which takes place prior to the selection of a contractor for this type of project, and acknowledges in its press release that documentation relating to the adjudication disappeared and then re-appeared at a later date.

The Ministry says that for this reason, it has decided to completely annul the bidding round and start again, preparing a completely new set of terms of adjudication in order that interested parties can compete on an equal footing in an open and transparent fashion.
It says that its decision to annul the existing contract is "for purely administrative reasons and does not compromise the future regeneration of the bay."

This is a big disappointment for local residents who have been campaigning for more than 20 years for the regeneration of this bay to take place. During the mining boom, when opencast mining in the Sierra Minera of La Unión was at its peak, millions of tons of sterile waste were dumped into the bay, making it one of the worst ecological disasters in Europe.

The road to regeneration has been a long, hard fought struggle for those who wish to see the area cleaned and brought back to life, with many disappointments along the way, but the Ministry are keen to assure residents that the regeneratuion will proceed once this "administrative" issue has been resolved.
The regeneration contract is worth 67.2 million euros.