If this suggestion is approved, this will effectively remove the protection by Nature 2000 network in cases of construction of small hydro power plants. Thus the chaotic and exceptionally damaging life in rivers construction of small hydro power plants would spread in the network’s protected areas, which have enjoyed certain protection thus far.
Amendments to the laws of this sort would solve the issues that various firms have with the law. As for example NIK-ENERGY-87, owned by former NEC chief Krassimir Parvanov. The firm has a small hydro power plant project on the Musomishka river, a tributary to Mesta river, which falls in the protected zone “Middle Pirin – Alibotush”. According to local media, which are against the SHPP project for it would dry up over three kilometers of the river, leaving in it the absurd 11 liters of water (contained by some of the bottles sold in supermarkets!!!), a local initiative committee has been founded in the village of Musomishte, town of Gotshe Delchev region. This SHPP story exposes why violators of the law need MP Ivanov’s initiative:
With her decision №ПО-01-139/27.08.2015, the director of the Basin Directorate Blagoevgrad Vangelia Ivanova rejects Parvanov’s request for issuance of permit for water take. Although the firm has an old similar permit, it has missed the deadline for finishing the construction and for submitting a request for renewal of the permit.
Due to the expiry of the permit, the request for a new one had to follow the procedure for a new investment intention, on which the Basin Directorate-Blagoevgrad had received instruction from the Ministry of the Environment and Water (MEW) with letter №РР-01-139/06.08.2015. Despite this rejection, five months later Parvanov’s firm submits a new request on November 13, 2015, which was approved in April 2016 on unknown grounds, regardless of the submitted objections by Wild Balkans Foundation and WWF Bulgaria.
What is more, even though the old permit had run out on 17.07.2015 and the new was issued almost a year later, the firms has meanwhile succeeded to get hold of a Permit for Use №СТ-05-315/09.03.2016 from the National Construction Control Directorate – Sofia (NCCD). How NCCD’s receiving commission issued the permit in question, although till that time the power plant had not a valid operational permit, has to be inspected by the Prosecutor’s Office, which is also approached on this case. WWF expects the Prosecutor’s Office to check also the motives, with which despite the objections from the eco-organisations, Ms. Vangelia Ivanova finds a way to issue a new permit after the explicit refusal at first. Ministry of the Environment’s role has also to be investigated in this case.
It turns out that all laws and procedures have to be effectively circumvented by the investor, if not on the first then on the second attempt, and, if something however is left to impede the construction of that harmful for nature power plant, this is European network Natura 2000.
Only a few days ago EU Commission declared that the Directives regulating Natura 2000 are set to perform their function well, and that it would work for their full application. The decision adopted unanimously is wholly in compliance with the position expressed for almost two years by over 200 European non-governmental organisations, WWF included. It would be outrageous, if at the end of its mandate this parliament affords itself to adopt the scandalous proposition counter to just announced EU Commission’s policy supported by Bulgaria as an EU member state.
We are following attentively the cases, in which non-complying hydro power plants are proposed at places with protected nature and insist the authorities to protect much more actively the public interest and the nature of Bulgaria. The case with Musomishte HPP can be called emblematic, because it is important its outcome to fall into the focus of media, whose mission is namely protection of public interest.
We remind that in an analogous way, the firm owned by the father of Valentin Zlatev received a permit for construction of a small HPP up from the village of Govedartsi, falling in the future protected area Rila Buffer. This case is again referred to the Prosecutor’s Office, since Samokov Municipality has obviously broken the law by issuing a construction permit, although the permit as per the Water Act has not yet entered into force. Moreover, the Municipality has evidently acted with unusual haste, since the construction permit №119/25.10.2016 for a HPP is issued one day after the request was submitted. Certainly, in this case a significant responsibility lies in the MEW, since it intentionally did not review the submitted since the beginning of September complaints, and thus presented to the investor the opportunity of starting construction at any time it chooses.
The ongoing accelerated completing of the Plans for Management of River Basins and their ecological assessments clearly displays the desire to work fast for certain interests. Public consultations and discussions are made useless by the short deadlines. It seems that the Ministry is trying to make sure that the plans will be adopted by the Government in between the holidays. It is absurd the plans and the measures, which have to protect such a significant natural and public resource as Bulgarian rivers in the next years, to be rushed in this manner.
At five minutes to midnight: the Parliament may allow the ruining of Bulgarian rivers
