WWF Bulgaria: The project to improve navigation on the Danube seeks funding without an environmental impact assessment – Rousse.Info

The Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTS) is already seeking funding for the project to improve navigation on the Danube in the Bulgarian-Romanian section of the river, although the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedure has not been completed. At the end of January, the project, known as “Fast Danube”, was submitted for funding to the “Connecting Europe Facility”, and in July it will become clear whether 230 million euros will be allocated for its implementation. It turns out that the project was submitted for evaluation by the European Commission before its official approval in Bulgaria.

According to the law, the results of the public consultation are taken into account when the Ministry of Environment and Water decides whether to approve a project or not. Additional measures to reduce the impact on the environment can be included in the decision, and they become a mandatory part of the project.

“In this case, MTS is looking for funds for a project that may not be approved. If approved, it may be incomplete, as the consent decision may include further mitigation measures. This practically renders meaningless the public discussions that took place in January in twelve of the affected municipalities, as well as those that took place between March 13 and 20 in eleven municipalities along the Danube River”, commented Katerina Rakovska, Senior Expert “Biodiversity Policies” at WWF.

Thanks to the participation of local people in the public discussion in Belene, it became clear that although planning for the project has been going on for several years, the fishing communities have not been informed how the planned processes for capital dredging and construction of engineering structures in the river would affect their activities . The potential negative effects on the Danube fisheries are not considered nor assessed in the report.

“The data in the environmental impact assessment report do not provide any guarantees that the proposed facilities and activities will lead to the expected improvement of shipping. The reasons for this lie in the great variability of the river, as well as in the already outdated digital model that was used. This uncertainty leaves the loophole that once approved, man-made facilities in the river and along the coast may be followed by new and new ones at a later stage, with all the environmental, social and economic risks to the local population.”, warns Stoyan Mihov, head of the “Waters” program at WWF.

WWF and other conservation organizations have addressed the project’s risks to natural ecosystems in their submissions. Given the enormous importance of the lower reaches of the Danube and the deteriorating conservation status of the few remaining sturgeon populations that inhabit it, they are a key conservation object in our part of the river.

The expert review of the EIA report shows two worrying facts:

• the negative effect of project activities on sturgeons will be significant as key feeding and breeding sites are affected;
• the envisaged mitigation measures are theoretical and of unclear effectiveness, have not been implemented in the Danube or other European rivers and do not correspond to the scale of the expected negative impacts.

WWF Bulgaria is the only organization in the country that conducts systematic scientific monitoring of sturgeon fish. She submitted her details to the assessment team but unfortunately they were not taken into account.

The socio-economic aspect is no less important. The Cost-Benefit Analysis report (annex of the EIA report) shows that the main share of the benefits of the project accrues to the transport business related to shipping. This includes vessel depreciation costs, crew costs, etc. In other words, the benefits are expected to be privatized, while the costs and risks remain at the public expense. In addition, the benefits of the project will be exported outside Bulgaria, and the future risks and costs of dealing with them will be borne by our taxpayer.

In its comments, the environmental protection organization WWF asked the Ministry of Environment and Water to issue a negative assessment of the EIA report and return it for revision.

You can read the opinions here:
Opinion of 22.01.2024
Opinion of 19.03.2024

WWF brought the topic to the public already at the beginning of the year, but, unfortunately, the opinion of the experts working for many years along the Danube River was not taken into account.