Failed harbor expansion to be investigated
Af Benita Dreyer-Andersen
400.000 kroner.
That's how much has been allocated for an external investigation into the case regarding the expansion of Aarhus Harbor, which was scrapped back in June.
This was reported by JP Aarhus.
A terms of reference - commonly referred to as a task description - has now been created for the external firm, which is to thoroughly examine how it came to pass that the Planning Appeals Board rejected Aarhus Municipality's plans for the harbor expansion. The agreement is backed by the parties of the settlement coalition behind the harbor expansion: S, K, V, and SF.
The purpose of the investigation is to learn from the debacle so that it does not happen again.
JP has reviewed the task formulation, which states that "the investigation aims to achieve organizational and managerial learning, so the municipality does not again make procedural errors in complex authority work."
Therefore, one will have a hard time finding an actual allocated responsibility for the indefinite postponement of the harbor expansion, the media states. This has met with criticism from Henrik Arens, a member of the Magistrate in Aarhus Municipality for the Liberal Alliance.
- I don't have much trust in the terms of reference that the four harbor parties have decided upon. It's a commissioned assignment, where the rest of the city council was kept out. This was also evident at the last city council meeting when the conservatives stated that they did not want to look back and find errors, but only wanted to look forward. So, it's 400,000 taxpayer kroner wasted, he concludes.
It has not yet been disclosed which external company will conduct the investigation.
Indefinite pause
Aarhus Municipality put the controversial expansion of Aarhus Harbor on hold back in June.
This was preceded by several weeks of controversy, peaking at the end of May when the Planning Appeals Board rejected the local plan from Aarhus Municipality, which otherwise greenlit the implementation of the 43-hectare expansion of Aarhus Harbor. The agreement also allowed for an additional phase of expansion by another 36 hectares.
According to the Planning Appeals Board, the local plan could not be approved because it did not meet the requirements on, among other things, the following points:
- Aarhus Municipality had not conducted a capacity analysis on the municipality’s total holdings of land designated for business purposes.
- Aarhus Municipality had not sufficiently demonstrated the necessity of the land reclamation.
- Aarhus Municipality’s Environmental Report did not meet the legislative requirements.
The municipality itself argued for pausing the project, stating that a new purification plant, ReWater, hampered the planned harbor expansion.
The development of the two projects proceeded in parallel, and the politicians chose to put the harbor project on hold so the other project could continue, the municipality argued.
The municipality also wrote that there is a need to rebuild trust in the harbor expansion project.
The Technical and Environmental Administration of Aarhus Municipality ultimately took full responsibility for the project hitting a wall. The committee admitted that their advice had been "inadequate."
- Unfortunately, we must acknowledge that our advising of Aarhus City Council did not live up to our standards. We have not sufficiently overseen the consequences of the state's environmental impact assessment being delayed while our local planning work continued, and this has led to a number of formal deficiencies in our local plan, said Michael Tolstrup, acting administrative manager of Technical and Environmental Affairs.
Up to a new city council to implement
The parties in the settlement group emphasize that it will be up to a new city council (following the municipal election in 2025, note) to decide whether to resume the process of increasing the capacity of Aarhus Port. In that situation, the settlement parties will invite other parties into the settlement group.
- If a new city council desires it, we can restart the process, but we must also ensure the right organization in Technical and Environmental Affairs to handle complex authority tasks. We now have time for that. We have decided on an external investigation of the process that led to the Planning Appeals Board's decision, and we are awaiting the results of that, it said in a press release from the settlement group behind the port expansion.
