Motorway threat to Bulgarian habitats

Date: 01/08/02

By David Cronin

SINCE the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty came into effect, EU policymakers have been legally obliged to consider how their activities can avoid environmental damage.

Yet green campaigners feel there is a danger this duty could be overlooked as the Union bankrolls its enlargement.

Take this example from Bulgaria:

About €3.3 million has been allocated from the EU's Phare programme for designing a huge motorway from Sofia to Kulata.

Estimates of the final cost of the project vary from €450 million to €641 million, with the Bulgarian government hoping the bulk of this sum will come from Brussels.

Environmentalists are alarmed by plans to route the motorway through the Kresna gorge, a narrow rocky canyon formed by the Strouma river in the country's south-west. From an ecological standpoint, the 17-kilometre gorge is unique.

Nowhere else in Bulgaria hosts so many species of reptiles, bats and butterflies. Campaigners fear major infrastructural developments could destroy their habitats.

Last week an 'expert council' set up by Bulgaria's public works ministry met to consider the motorway scheme.

Bulgaria's environment ministry has requested that possible alternatives to the Kresna gorge section of the road should be studied.

But Petko Kotachev, spokesman for the Sofia-based Centre for Environmental Information and Education (CEIE), fears this request may not be heeded by the expert council.

He is also dismayed that the council is meeting in secret, with green activists kept in the dark about its deliberations.

'We are still waiting for the final decision [on the motorway] but it is clear that the chosen route will seriously affect the environment,' he said.

'It is very likely that political pressure will now be put on the environment ministry to approve the project's continuation.'

Italian firm SPEA Ingegneria Europa has received almost €400,000 in EU funding to prepare an environmental impact assessment on the so-called Struma highway.

CEIE and other organisations say the study - which was completed earlier this year - gives no more than a cursory two-page description of alternatives.

One substitute to the current proposal would involve moving the controversial section some 7-10 kilometres east of Kresna gorge to the base of Pirin mountain.

That would see it located in an area where human activity has already left an impression.

Environmentalists are alarmed by plans to route a motorway through the Kresna gorge in Bulgaria. Article is part of a European Voice survey on sustainable development.