Too often, environmental impact studies in Croatia are treated as merely a ‘pro forma’ exercise in order to obtain the construction permit.
In 2010, the inauguration of the first hydroelectric power plant built in Croatia since independence was a major milestone – big enough for the prime minister at the time, Jadranka Kosor, to take five government members along with her to its opening. In her words, the HE Lesce plant was an important step towards creating a more energy-independent country.
HE Lesce came with a 52-metre-high dam and an accumulation lake covering an area of 146 hectares. It was built on the river Dobra, in the heart of an area that was set to become part of Natura 2000, a European network of nature conservation areas.
Five years earlier, local activists argued that no proper research had been done about the potential impact of the plant on the valuable ecosystem of the Dobra canyon. They warned that the environmental impact assessment (EIA) study used to justify the project was completely outdated, done way back in 1986 when the hydroplant was just a distant dream. Yet the project, run by Croatian state-owned energy company HEP, got the construction license anyway.
Just two years after the plant’s inauguration ceremony, the damage to the environment was already becoming painfully apparent. After the plant was built, the maximum water flow in Dobra increased from 60 to 150 cubic metres per second, damaging the riverbed, flooding the surrounding lands, local roads and even houses, and endangering lives.
The harmful impacts were so obvious that another state body, the country’s water management agency Hrvatske vode (Croatian Waters), had to make a start on repairing the damage already in 2012.
Fast forward to the present day and HE Lesce is still making the lives miserable for many of the area’s inhabitants. And the consequences are now visible even on the river Kupa, into which the Dobra flows. The hydropower plant is the subject of continuous protests, but the ministry in charge of environmental protection – which often changed names in the last decade and most recently goes under the name of the Ministry of Environment Protection and Green Transition – still likes to justify its existence with that one EIA study from 1986, which, oddly enough, is nowhere to be found today.
(continue reading in balkaninsight.com, July 8, 2024)
