Court cancels environmental permit for small hydro facility

Environmental group Zeleni Neretva said that after a three-year process, the Cantonal Court in Sarajevo issued a judgment which cancelled ecological permits for the construction of hydropower plant Dindo on the river Ljuta.

Environmental permits for this one and two other power plants on the Ljuta – Memiškovići and Donje Luko, were issued in May 2013 to concessionaire Kolektor Turboinštitut from Ljubljana, Slovenia, by the Federal Ministry of Environment and Tourism after completing the environmental impact assessment study. Ljuta a right tributary of the river Neretva in the municipality of Konjic, southwest of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s capital.

This is not the first court ruling in one of the two entities making up BiH to dispute an environmental permit obtained in the process, there are plenty of reasons to call this judgment historic, the statement said. Environmental organizations had the most objections because the entire project should have been implemented in an area that was in 2005 declared an area of special importance for FBiH, a future protected area. Environmental organizations from Konjic and Sarajevo, with the support of partner groups from all over the country, organized a public protest in Sarajevo. Since the ministry ignored the appeal, environmental organizations turned to the only legal option and launched an appeal to the competent judicial institutions.

The court accepted almost all the objections on the study and finally passed a judgment which annuls the permit. Since the other two controversial hydropower plants have almost identical characteristics, the same objections apply for them and it is realistic to expect that the court will soon bring the same judgment, the article adds.