Buk Bijeli Dam
Ivo Skoric
ivo at reporters.net
Sat Oct 16 17:58:23 CEST 2004
About at the same time Dragan Jovanovic wrote about the issue for
NIN, I produced the radio show for Radio 101 (called UNESCO,
Greenpeace, WWF, ...). I didn't know Dejan that you went rafting on
Tara. Lucky you. It is great to hear Dragan leads Serbia's Greens
today. 20 years after, I still have a tape of the show. Yesterday, I
finally had a chance to listen to it. In 1985 the project was called
Bijeli Brijeg (which, I guess, is the same as Buk Bijeli in current
language). Energoprojekt from Belgrade was supposed to build a dam
that would turn 1/3 of the about 150 km long canyon into a lake, but
the dam, built at village of Tepavac, would be just 15% of the
canyon's height. It was supposed to address Montenegro's power
hunger, not Serbia's, I apologize for not listening to my own show
before I wrote the earlier message. Montenegro's presidency at the
time claimed that it needed 800KWh a year more to expand its economy.
The Tara plant would arguably produce 880KWh a year. Montenegro had
(and still has) abundant, but undeveloped, hydro-power potential. The
issue was (and still is) whether Montenegro would build its own power
plant to support its large aluminum smelter (also built at that time,
as the largest aluminum smelter in Europe at that time), or would it
depend on the other republics (Serbia and Bosnia in this case - which
were the only republics in former Yugoslavia that produced more
electric power than they used in 1980s) to supply the power.
Montenegro's presidency bid to build the dam could today largely be
interpreted as a bluff: it arose after the meeting of the all 6
republic's energy ministers in Belgrade, where Montenegro did not get
the support they wanted. They knew the dam could never be build
because it violated a dozen of federal and republic laws (the law on
national parks, the law on ratification of foreign treaties - Tara is
on UNESCO's World Heritage list since 1976, the land zoning
regulations, etc.). The whole issue was to make Bosnia and Serbia
agree to supply affordable power to the aluminum smelter. The dam
building was supposed to start in 1986, and finish in 1992. But many
in Montenegro's republic leadership were actually opposed to it.
Polls of people in Belgrade and Zagreb showed that public believed
the project was stupid. International organizations (like Greenpeace,
UNESCO and WWF) were baffled that someone would actually even think
of that. Environmental scientists were predicting disater for the
entire ecosystem of Montenegro, and energy analysts were saying that
by current projections at the time the Tara dam would add just 2% of
electricity to Yugoslavia's grid by the year 2000. In Ljubljana
environmentalists organized petitions against it on the street.
Eventually, the dam was not built, but aluminum smelter was. The
energy supply came from upgrading the Djerdap hydro-power plant, as
Jovanovic wrote (and it probably still depends on it). Never enough,
however, for the full capacity of the smelter. Montenegro does have
some bauxite, but definitely not the large deposits that were
claimed. The studies (commenced AFTER the smelter was built) shown
that the original projections grossly overestimated the bauxite
deposits, because someone in Montenegros party's leadership really
wanted to have that factory built. So, the smelter always operated
with bauxite from Croatia and from overseas imports. Since neither
the promise of cheap power nor the promise of cheap bauxite
materialized, the smelter never really made expected profits. Today,
two decades old, ill-maintained factory, that depends on imports of
both bauxite and energy is obviously un-economical, and it clearly
cannot compete with a smaller, but newer and more efficient aluminum
smelter in nearby Croatian-controlled Mostar, Bosnia, which has
access to abundant Bosnia's hydro-power and to Croatia's bauxite. The
expensive dam on Tara (it is a very difficult construction location)
would just add to the red numbers of the Montenegro's bottom line.
Instead, Montenegro should turn Durmitor National Park (where canyon
Tara is just one of 6 beautiful glacial canyons) into a tourist-mecca
for Europeans, just as Colorado National Park is for Americans. In
1985 DNP made 300 times less money a year than Plitvice National Park
in Croatia. But the solution is not to destroy the park, it is to
manage it better. The potential is sure there - while Tara canyon is
much shorter than Colorado, it is still the second longest, and it's
sides are even taller than Colorado's.
ivo
On 15 Oct 2004 at 11:36, Dejan Kovacevic wrote:
Great news, again, coming from our beautiful country (or rather
countries" to be politically/factually correct)...
There's only one minor misstatement: the first time around the idea
was not floated because of Serbia's hunger for energy; then, as now,
it was a project of local party chiefs and it was abandoned because
it
really didn't make any sense in terms of economy - it was to
expansive
to build, the capacity would be too small and republics couldn't
agree
how to finance it. At the time it was decided that it's easier to
add
new turbines to Djerdap damn on Danube and finally complete one third
of capacity that was left unused since opening Djerdap in the late
sixties. It was a welcome change, a rare sane decision in usually
insane economic environment where they have built unsustainable
factories throughout former Yugoslavia - yes, the aluminum plant is
one of those since there is absolutely NO bauxite in Montenegro - but
there are many other examples, the most famous being Obrovac and that
huge one in Makedonija - sorry, the name escaped me - that were built
for hundreds of millions of dollars and then deemed economically
unreasonable and therefore never even open for work...
But I clearly remember the Tara project, that was the occasion when I
heard one of the local party bullies making the following statement:
"Jebes opstinu koja nije zagadjena!" ("Fuck the county that's not
polluted!") And that was the attitude: we have to pollute to get
developed, since all developed countries were already polluted and
Yugoslavia had some catching up to do.
Unfortunately, the attitude towards environment in Western Balkans
has
not changed - the economic well being is the main thing, the
rudimentary capitalist mentality of new entrepreneurs has no dilemma
about such trivial matter as is the environment and the newly formed
states are too weak for anything, let alone "green" issues. (Hell,
they don't respect human right, why would they respect the rights of
trees or frogs.)
But I am proud to say I was involved in saving Tara the first time
around. It was one of the first "green" initiatives - or perhaps the
first one I encountered - and it was very simple yet effective:
Dragan
Jovanovic, the journalist for NIN magazine in Belgrade and now the
president of Green Party in Serbia, suggested if people would just go
and visit Tara they'll change their minds and it would be good for
the
locals. And it was. We just went for hikes and rafting and something
happened - the locals started to view things differently. This was
before UNESCO got involved so people basically had no real leverage,
but in addition to economic factors mentioned above - it helped.
As for the current situation in Montenegro, there really is very
little reason involved in their deliberating - economic, political,
environmental - so any position the parties will take is possible,
mostly just in spite of the opponents... Don't be surprised then...
dejanK
Ivo Skoric wrote:
>
> The largest and deepest canyon on the planet is the Grand Canyon of
> river Colorado in the U.S. The second deepest is canyon of river
> Tara in tiny Montenegro. That's why it is declared world heritage by
> UNESCO. Yet it may be no more. Montenegro revived its 20 years old
> botched plans to build a hydro-electric plant on Tara. Montenegro is
> justifying its Three Gorges project with the raising country's
> demand for electricity, just like China. Only Montenegro's
> population is about 1/3000 size of China's. The current
> power-producing capacity is satisfactory. The giant aluminum plant
> in Podgorica is not such a large gdp or job generator as the
> politicians would like us to believe. When it was built by French,
> it was the largest in Europe. But it hasn't been maintained,
> upgraded and repaired for years, so today it operates under capacity
> not because of power shortage, but because of its ageing equipment.
> There is cheaper bauxite in Africa and cheaper power in Canada - dam
> on Tara will not make Montenegro's aluminum more competitive, and it
> will permanently destroy the largest tourism asset Montenegro has.
> Last time when this idea was floated it was to satisfy Serbia's
> hunger for energy. I bet that this time around again it will find
> supporters mostly in the camp of those in Montenegro who favor
> closer ties with Serbia. ivo
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3743698.stm-----------------
> -- -------------------------------------- Ivo Skoric 19 Baxter
> Street Rutland VT 05701 802.775.7257 ivo at balkansnet.org
> balkansnet.org
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---------------------------------------------------------
Ivo Skoric
19 Baxter Street
Rutland VT 05701
802.775.7257
ivo at balkansnet.org
balkansnet.org
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