Despite the rampage about the construction of hydro power plant Dabar in recent months, which is the the first HPP within the Gornji horizonti project, it seems that the realization has not come to a stop. Today a public invitation has been published for creating the technical documentation for the main project of the hydro power plant with supervision over the exploration activities. This is a contract worth approximately 3MEUR.
In addition to this one, within the project Gornji horizonti , the construction of two more HPP is planned, HPP Dubrovnik II and HPP Ombla in Croatia.
And why so many protests from civic societies and environmental activists and independent experts? They claim that if these projects get implemented, it would cause salinity of Neretva River delta and the complete disappearance of agricultural production in the region, and the drying up of nature park Hutovo blato. According to their estimates, the construction of hydro power plants Dabar could leave Republic Srpska without a sufficient amount of water area along the valley of the Neretva River, which would be disastrous in the long-term agricultural production.
It is planned in this project that huge amounts of water, more than the entire flow of the Neretva River in Mostar are to be diverted to HPP Dubrovnik II from Neretva and Trebisnjica, which will have a dramatic impact on the hydrology and ecology of the eastern Herzegovina and Malostonski Bay allthe way to the delta of the Neretva river.
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has sent a request to the governments of the Republic Srpska and Croatia, which initiated this project, to stop it until an extensive environmental impact study is done. In WWF they believe that the project was done without proper approach, preparation and involvement of the wider community.
In addition to NGOs and citizens, the Federal Ministry of Environment and Tourism (FMET) has initiated a proceedings by filing a complaint to the District Court of Banja Luka, after the Ministry of Physical Planning, Civil Engineering and Ecology of the Republic Srpska approved the controversial study on the environmental impact of the project HPP Dabar and ignored suggestions of FMET, as well comments of the associations and the local population in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The reason for this is that the study has no separate chapter with an assessment of environmental impacts in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which should have included the Environmental Impact Assessment in a cross-border context to the Republic of Croatia.
Source Serbia Energy Magazine
