The Regional Secretariat for the Environment and the Sea, through the Regional Directorate for the Environment as the authority of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in the Autonomous Region of the Azores, will be in charge of conducting the post-evaluation of the projects subject to EIA procedures in the Region. Taking into account the experience of previous years, the Regional Secretariat has decided to include another important dimension for post-evaluation, which consists in verifying the implementation of the environmental management measures stipulated in the Environmental Impact Statements (EIS). These measures are commonly known as mitigation measures at construction phase and/or project operation. In order to verify the feasibility of the mitigation measures specified by the EIS, the Regional Directorate for the Environment has decided to provide the regional technical staff with the necessary skills for post-evaluation actions by learning from the experiences and difficulties in the implementation of the mitigation measures in Mainland Portugal. For that purpose, the Regional Directorate has requested the collaboration of the Inspectorate General for the Environment and Spatial Planning which promptly organised a training course.
This training action was attended by 25 participants and took place at the Horta Public Library and Regional Archives from April 27 to 29, thus becoming a privileged space for discussions and sharing experiences between the participants of different stages of an environmental impact assessment procedure.  In addition to a theoretical component, the training course also includes a practical component, which culminated in a technical visit to the works of the Horta port, a project at a post-evaluation stage.