The expansion of Ibiza airport would affect protected areas of the Salines

PalmaThe expansion of Ibiza airport projected by Aena would affect two peripheral protection zones of the Ses Salines natural park, as denounced this Thursday by the environmental organization GEN-GOB. One is located to the east of the terminal, where the airport operator plans to build a new building, and the other to the west, in the area of the torrent that the project proposes to bury.

These strips act as protection zones for the natural park and, according to the environmental organization, the planned actions would be "incompatible" with the usage limitations established by the Natural Resources Management Plan (PORN) of Ses Salines.

The warning comes just after the Council of Ministers approved the new Airport Regulation Document (DORA III), which will set the investments, capacity, and tariffs for Aena's airports between 2027 and 2031. The planning foresees that Ibiza airport will go from the 9.17 million passengers calculated for 2027 to 9.72 million in 2031: 550,000 more annual travelers in four years.

GEN maintains that the growth in airport activity would increase noise, polluting emissions, and the risk of collisions between planes and birds. It would also generate more traffic from vehicles, buses, and ground services in the surroundings of an especially sensitive natural space.

Pressure on water resources

The entity also focuses on the airport's water consumption, which it already considers "unacceptable" in the current context of the water crisis in Ibiza. Environmentalists question the use of salinized wells and the operation of the facilities' own desalination plant, both due to its administrative situation and the management of the brine.

To these impacts, they add light pollution. GEN criticizes the airport for using high-power white luminaires and warns that the expansion of the terminal would lead to more lighting, with potential effects on the birds of the Ses Salines ponds.

The organization also attributes the sewage discharges detected at the nearby des Codolar beach to the high volume of passengers that the facilities already support. In their view, a new increase in air traffic would only aggravate the problem.

Aena denies that it wants to increase capacity

Aena maintains that the reform does not intend to bring more tourists to Ibiza, but rather to adapt the airport to new European security requirements and improve services. The project, valued at some 230 million euros, includes a new pier for flights outside the Schengen area, with a two-story building, eight boarding gates with jet bridges, and four gates for remote boarding.

It also plans to install new baggage control systems, redistribute the waiting area, expand the restrooms, the spaces for people with reduced mobility, and the commercial and restaurant offerings. The inter-island flight area would have four specific gates, and the VIP lounge would change location and gain surface area.

The airport director, Marta Torres, assured in June that “there is no intention related to a change in capacity” and placed the start of the works around 2030. The project still needs to be drafted and submitted to the corresponding environmental assessment.

The GEN, however, already denounced in July before several State bodies that the DORA III actions violate the airport's Master Plan, approved in 2010. According to the entity, that document set a forecast of 5.67 million annual passengers and a maximum of seven million, a figure that the facilities have already widely exceeded.

The rejection of the airport's growth has also reached Congress. The PP, the PSOE, and Sumar approved an initiative in June to rule out any increase in capacity and limit interventions to improvements in safety, accessibility, energy efficiency, and quality of service. For the GEN, the impacts on Ses Salines would add to the congestion and overcrowding that the island is already suffering, and force a questioning of the increase in air traffic planned by Aena.