/ world today news/ The “Struma highway” trap is loaded and it’s only a matter of time before it snaps. When it does (because there’s no way it won’t happen anymore), we’ll all pay. The estimates of the losses our country will suffer, vary from about 800 million to over 2 billion leva. The reason for this is the long-term bending of the state to lobbyist interests and the Balkan stubbornness of the leadership of the longest-ruling party in the last 8 years – GERB – to impose controversial or frankly unacceptable decisions – in a kind of “Pelican Version”, today’s rulers are frantically trying to remove citizens and their organizations from the discussion of major projects.
On Wednesday, it became known that six non-governmental organizations have submitted an official complaint to the European Commission for violations during the construction of the Struma highway. It is about the last section that has not been designed and not commissioned – the route through the Kresnen gorge. According to environmentalists, the construction of even one part of the highway through the gorge violates European environmental legislation. This would be catastrophic for the protected species of plants and animals in the region and our country could be condemned to pay heavy fines.
At the same time, if the highway is not completed within the current programming period or by the end of 2022 at the latest, we will have to return not only the money for this section, but for the entire highway, which is financed by the European funds. This is the last highway route in our country for which the EC has agreed to allocate funds. In the period 2014 – 2020, roads were dropped as a priority at the expense of railways. “Struma” remained in the plans only because it is considered part of a strategic corridor and must be completed.
As a rule, in Bulgaria, road projects without some kind of scandal are rare. But “Struma” broke all records.
Exactly ten years have passed since the opening of the first short section from the “Daskalovo” road interchange to Dolna Dikanya. The following sections ran with huge delays and continuous cost increases. It was necessary to rework road connections, which, due to their frankly incompetent design, created a traffic hazard. The former and current Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and the former regional minister Liliana Pavlova periodically went to photo sessions on the irretrievably delayed sections. At one point, even the archaeologists were to blame for the cripples, who, you see, according to Borisov, extorted him for more money in order to do their work faster. When another scandal erupted months ago – with missing documentation for the construction of the “Zheleznitsa” tunnel and the approaches to it, the most expensive road facility in our country so far, we thought that the peak had been reached. But it’s not. It’s yet to come.
In their complaint to the European Commission, the environmental organizations point out that there are two alternatives to the passage of the highway through the Kresna Gorge. If you have to look at things realistically, there is only one alternative – since the previous program period, there has been an approved application form for this section only for a long – 15-kilometer tunnel.
A new application form for another route in Brussels has not been submitted, and will not be submitted soon. Simply because there is no fully approved new route. There is a concept project, the competition for which was recently won by “Road Project 2000” and which costs BGN 2.5 million.
Arriving at this conceptual design is also curious. First, again under the administration of Borisov, the option with the long tunnel was rejected. The arguments were that the construction is expensive, the subsequent maintenance as well, that there is radiation, faults, there is no place to store the excavated rock mass, and the area is highly seismic. The pressure to reject this option came mainly from the large Bulgarian construction companies, which mainly feed on orders for infrastructure construction, but do not have the capacity for such a complex facility. They were supported by the Chamber of Builders in Bulgaria. The rulers squatted down.
And there has been no final solution for years now. The option of moving the entire highway to the east of the gorge appeared. It is supported by the environmentalists, who also insist on it in their complaint to the EC. Boyko Borisov also agreed with them at one point. There was opposition that it was too expensive to move the route entirely, and the authorities balked. This is how we arrived at a version in which the current road through the gorge becomes one-way, and in the opposite direction the road moves to the east. It should be specified –
in this version we are not talking about a highway,
and for expressway. This is precisely why the conceptual design competition was announced. The winners prevailed with the idea of a superviaduct with a clear opening of 302 meters, the second longest in the world after a Chinese one. How this ties in with previous fears of high seismicity in the area, no one has explained. As a cover, local citizens also spoke out against moving the road away from Kresna – so that their business would not be lost…
Perhaps there are still people who remember that the Struma highway was supposed to be built by the Olympics in Athens. It was in 2004, passed and left, even some of the Olympic sites managed to be neglected and start to crumble. But this is a Greek burden. The Bulgarian problem is that there is no selected route through the Kresnen Gorge. For the variant with the two expressways (80 km per hour max), an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is made. It should be ready in a few months. Only then will it be possible to apply to Brussels for approval and possible funding.
Judging by the ecologists’ report to the European Commission, this EIA will be appealed. That is why the rulers have developed a kind of “Pelican Version” (with apologies to John Grisham). Three deputies from GERB – the head of the legal commission Danail Kirilov, Stanislav Ivanov and the former minister of the environment Ivelina Vasileva introduced on Tuesday in the parliament a proposal for changes to the Environmental Protection Act. They will stop the series of appeals for large investment projects. According to the authors of the project, the decisions of the EIA court of first instance will be final for objects of national importance – highways, dams, gas pipelines and –
note – objects in natural parks.
The public will be able to express an opinion on the results of the EIA at the earliest stage, the importers are motivated. Just two days later, on Thursday, the project entered the relevant parliamentary committee for discussion. It also introduces “special court proceedings”, that is, speeding up procedures so that decisions on possible appeals are issued within 6 months after their filing.
World history knows quite a few “special laws” and they are usually obscure. One can also add the changes in the APC, which drastically increase the fees for cassation appeals of court decisions by citizens, non-governmental organizations and companies, and against which employers have already spoken. In practice, the rulers try to parry any civil position that would contradict their intentions. All that remains is to add the term “national construction site” and to appoint a representative of the Executive Commission of GERB.
During his previous mandate, Prime Minister Boyko Borisov held numerous photo sessions and ribbon cutting for short sections of the Struma highway
The “Struma” case is probably a formal occasion for the legal changes. But there is also the “Bansko” case study, let’s say. Others will emerge. The “Hemus” highway, which is a priority for today’s managers, for example, has no way not to collide head-on with environmental norms.
How the battle around “Struma” will develop in the coming months remains to be seen. In the meantime came an implicit admission that there was no way this route could be built on time. About a week ago, Transport Minister Ivaylo Moskovski stated before the transport committee in the parliament that if a quick decision is not reached, the money for the highway will be redirected to “Hemus” and the tunnel under Shipka. In Brussels, however, “Hemus” won’t even listen to her – from there, they have long ago explicitly excluded the northern highway from the possibilities of financing with European taxpayers’ money. No one can explain whether Moskovsky is betting on something real, or, as for the parliament and for the parliament, he is just talking to himself. The regional minister responsible for roads, Nikolay Nenkov, is silent.
The paradox is that there is not a single gram of foreign cheese in the loaded Struma trap. We entered it at the will of our rulers. And in the end we will pay, though not willingly.
Problems with the finished sections of the “Struma” surfaced continuously – months after their official opening.
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