Expansion of São Sebastião gets to Ibama
Valor Econômico
Under development since 2007, the plan for the expansion of the port of São Sebastião has advanced in accordance with the schedule, in spite of the resistance of part of the local population to the arrival of the works to a kind of tropical paradise of the inhabitants of São Paulo. In September, the company Docas de São Sebastião submitted to the Ibama (Brazilian Institute for Environment and Natural Renewable Resources) the environmental impact assessment / Environmental Impact Report (Eia-Rima) and it awaits the date for the public hearing on the undertaking. If everything goes well, the company expects to publish the bidding rules for the lease of the future terminals still in the first half of 2010.
The project can turn an incipient port into a set of bulk terminals, containers and vehicles capable of competing with the largest ports of the country, including the Port of Santos. In accordance with the schedule of the expansion plan, within seven years the port of São Sebastião may carry one third of the containers the Port of Santos carries currently. It will have capacity for three times more vehicles, two times more alcohol and will be able to transport 20% of the sugar that is currently carried by the neighbor port. São Sebastião still wants to receive 30% of the operations of support to the pre-salt platforms, which would amount to 500 thousand tons in ten years.
According to the President of the port, Frederico Bussinger, the expansion plan should result in a set of public tenders for the construction and lease of five or six terminals that will require an investment of nearly R$ 2 billion (US$ 1.16 billion). According to the law of the ports, they will be 25-year contracts, renewable for another 25 years. But the project depends on an infrastructure of ducts, warehouses and highways that still don't exist.
According to the executive of the state company, there is already a project in the Government of the State of São Paulo for the installation of an intermodal complex in São José dos Campos, integrating the two railroad lines of MRS Logística, the Dutra and Carvalho Pinto highways and even the testing runway of the Technological Institute of Aeronautics (ITA) - 3 km long, for years the runway has been the target of projects of commercial use. The intermodal terminal would be the fifth edge of a polygon surrounding the capital of São Paulo where 50% of the cargo of the State is located.
But the main project to allow the expansion is the duplication of the Tamoios Highway and the construction of a new segment connecting the road to the port, replacing the currently precarious access made through the Rio-Santos. According to Bussinger, both the projects should be executed separately - the segment connecting the highway to the port is a priority - what would assure a gradual increase of the traffic capacity of the access to São Sebastião. Bussinger assures the management of the Tamoios project is being made together with the expansion project and they will be ready in time to allow the investments in the port. This way, there is no need to wait for the definition of the projects for the road access to publish the bidding rules for the expansion of São Sebastião.
In order to facilitate the approval by the Ibama, the new port of São Sebastião will offer a solution unprecedented in the country: it will not be made over a landfill, but on concrete columns. With that, the water will be allowed to circulate under the floor, improving the sea life reproductive conditions. There were also changes to the project so as to leave a 100-meter range of free waters beside the bay. Thus, the fishing community continues with access to the sea, and the only a mangrove of the region - an area of one thousand square meters and 700 trees.
According to Bussinger, the location of the port already provides natural advantages. Since it is not an estuary - a mouth of a river - there are no sediments nor the need to dredge, nor mangroves. With that, the terminal will have drafts still uncommon in the country, of up to 20 meters, allowing the access to large container ships with up to 15 thousand TEUs - Twenty-foot equivalent units.