It is impossible to restore the old glory to the "Tear of Europe“

The Chinese company China Road and Bridge Corporation, CRBC, did not repair the damage to the bed and banks of the Tara River in Mateševo, although it was obliged to do so by July 2022 at the latest, BIRN analysis showed.

In August 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency gave CRBC consent to the plan "Measure for remediation of the river bed in the area of the Tara 2 bridge", whereby the Chinese company undertook to repair the damage caused during the construction of the first phase of the highway from Smokovac to Mateševo, but all the measures have not yet been implemented.

According to the approved plan, CRBC was obliged to restore part of the Tara bed and the surrounding terrain near the "Mateševo" interchange to its original state, by renovating them with natural material brought by the river. After arranging the riverbed, the Chinese company was obliged to green the areas along the road with indigenous vegetation and thus improve the visual effect of the coast, as well as to stock the river with 1,000 pieces of fish fry.

The Environmental Protection Agency told BIRN that part of the construction work on the part upstream of the planned remediation measures has not yet been completed, and that is why the weeding of the coast and stocking have not started. "We expect that in the coming period CRBC will fully implement all obligations defined by the foreseen measures or, otherwise, we will do it at the expense of the Chinese company," the Agency told BIRN.

The company CRBC was building the first section of 41 kilometers of highway that should connect Bar in the south of Montenegro with Boljar on the border with Serbia.

The Chinese company started the construction of the first section from Smokovac to Mateševo in 2015, which, after a two-year delay, was opened on July 13, 2022.

Montenegro raised a loan of 809 million dollars for a period of twenty years from the Chinese EXIM Bank for the construction of the first section.

 

After the builders, the river ran out of fish

 

The construction of the priority section from Podgorica to Kolašin, among other things, was accompanied by controversies due to the devastation of the bed and banks of the Tara River, which is located on part of the planned highway route.

 

Representatives of the civil sector and the professional public accused the Chinese company of continuously destroying the river, which has been on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage list since 1977, while they criticized the competent institutions for poor monitoring of the works.

 

In the report of the UNESCO expert from November 2018, it is stated that there are "a lot of landfills and discarded material" on the part of the banks of the Tara, as well as that the competent institutions "did not adequately control the observance of biological and environmental standards during the works".

 

While the then Prime Minister Duško Marković and Minister of Sustainable Development Pavle Radulović claimed in 2019 that the river was not completely endangered, the European Commission warned in the same year in the progress report that the Montenegrin authorities "should be stricter in assessing and preventing possible negative impacts of construction works on the environment on the Tara River in the context of the construction of the highway Bar - Boljare".

 

Competent institutions in Montenegro officially admitted for the first time that part of the Tara was devastated only in October 2020, when the environmental inspection determined that the CRBC had deepened and moved a part of the river bed under the old Mateševo bridge and undermined the left bank of the river in a length of 500 meters.

 

By inspecting the site in Mateševo, the environmental inspection found that, due to the displacement of the riverbed, the river undermined part of the bank and endangered the macadam road that runs parallel to the riverbed.

 

"Therefore, suspended substances that affect biodiversity fall into the riverbed. In the bed of Tara, the concrete foundations of the skeletal steel structure, which was used for concreting the main supports of the 'Tara 2' bridge, remained. The steel structure has been dismantled," the environmental inspection stated at the time.

 

After the Environmental Protection Agency determined the damage and demanded remediation, CRBC proposed remediation measures for part of the river to the Agency in April 2021. The first proposal of measures was rejected after the Agency assessed that it was not in accordance with its recommendations nor was it harmonized with the Law on Liability for Environmental Damage. After supplementing the proposed measures, the final remediation plan was determined on August 2, 2021.

 

The Agency told BIRN that the Chinese company rehabilitated the left bank of the river and prepared the local macadam road, and carried out remediation of the Tara River bed in a length of about 500 meters.

In the "Measures of remediation" it is stated that after these works, which entails the removal of the concrete structure and the restoration of the river flow through all three arches of the bridge, a natural stabilization of the critical slopes can be expected.

"In the event that this did not happen, it is necessary to approach the stabilization of the left bank of the Tara River, under the old Mataševo bridge," the document states.

The Environmental Protection Agency did not tell BIRN what the results of the remediation were, as well as whether the expected natural leveling of the riverbed occurred, as foreseen by the program.

In the event that natural remediation did not occur, CRBC was obliged to level the thalweg using construction methods or to scoop up natural material from the shore with a backhoe and fill the depression.

 

The editorial staff of BIRN was unable to get in touch with CRBC.

According to the planned plan, the Chinese company was responsible for monitoring the implementation of remediation measures, while an external expert - a biologist - was in charge of monitoring the wildlife and stocking. The total costs of the measures are 108 thousand euros, of which 35 thousand are for monitoring and research during the development of the program.

However, the president of the Sports Fishing Club "Tara i Morača", Momir Živković, claims that the works on the highway have permanently destroyed the river and its fish stock. In April 2018, that fishing club received a concession for managing fish stocks in the Kolasin waters, but due to the devastation of the Tara River, it demanded compensation from the Chinese company.

In the past, dozens of fish could be caught in Tara in one day, and the river was full of grayling, carp and trout. Today, the situation with the fish stock is a disaster. Not only can you not find a trout, but I give my head that from this place (Mataševo) to Lake Biograd you cannot find a total of two anglers", said Živković to BIRN.

Excavators and old landfills still on the shores

 

The expert public and non-governmental organizations criticized the remediation measures approved by the Agency, stating that the rehabilitation of 500 meters of the riverbed is not enough because, as they claim, more than six kilometers of the river course was destroyed. They also warned that it is not possible for backhoes to naturally level the bed, nor can biodiversity be improved by stocking a part of the river that is almost sterile.

 

Lazar Grdinić from the Network for the Affirmation of the Non-Governmental Sector (MANS) claims that there are no serious efforts to rehabilitate the devastated part of the Tara riverbed and at least partially restore it to its previous state.

 

"Illegal dumps of construction material and waste created by digging the tunnel are still standing on the bank of the river, now covered with vegetation... I remind you that the material was deposited there under the cover of the so-called regulation of the river, i.e. prevention of spills due to works carried out downstream. Now that material forms the 'new' bank of the river itself, which can be clearly seen on satellite images," Grdinić told BIRN.

During a tour of the part of the Tara River in October last year, which is located right next to the "Matasevo" toll plaza, the BIRN team found construction machines and trucks carrying out works along the river bank. In that part, the width of the Tara is reduced to only about one meter.

Although one of the goals of the remediation was to return the riverbed and the coast to their original state, the Environmental Protection Agency admits that this is not possible now.

"It is not possible to return the riverbed to its original appearance at the intersection of the Tara River and the highway, given that the riverbed is the location for the execution of works according to the main project," said the Agency.

The Agency claims that the results of the remediation are already noticeable in the riverbed, reminding that the state of biodiversity was controlled last year, as if the control will be carried out again after the completion of the work on the rehabilitation of the coast. The Agency did not clarify the results of the biodiversity control.

However, Grdinić claims that the river has been permanently devastated, while entire animal species have been wiped out from the Tara ecosystem.

"So far, there are no serious scientific studies that would give a definitive answer to the question of the extent of the devastation," claimed Grdinić.

 

Criminal charges are mostly dismissed

 

In October 2018, six non-governmental organizations submitted a criminal complaint to the Supreme State Prosecutor against the responsible persons in the Government of Montenegro and the environmental inspection, as well as against the CRBC and the members of the highway works supervision commission, accusing them of not reacting to the devastation of Tara .

Along with the criminal charges, MANS submitted to the prosecutor's office the photographs of the devastated part of the Tara river bed. The Supreme State Prosecutor's Office rejected all reports, after which the non-governmental organization submitted complaints about the work of acting prosecutors, some of which are in the process.

"The only case that has been opened, or at least we have no information that it has been closed, is the case of the exploitation of gravel from the bed of the Tara, in the area of the 'Uvač 4' bridge, where the inspection in 2020 stated that construction material was dug directly from the river and about informed the prosecution," he said.

Grindic points out that the basic state prosecutor's office, in Kolasinje, after the expert opinion, distributed the indictment against CRBS, while at the end of 2020, MANS submitted a separate criminal complaint to the special state prosecutor's office against the then Ministry of Transport and Maritime Affairs, as an investor, and CRBC as a contractor.

"In March 2021, we were informed that the report was forwarded to the Basic State Prosecutor's Office in Podgorica, and since then we have had no information," Grdinić said.

Due to the destruction of the fish stock in Tara, following the lawsuit filed by SRK "Tara and Morača", the Basic Court in Podgorica in November 2021 asked the CRBC to pay approximately 200,000 euros in compensation to the fishermen.

After the appeal of the Chinese company, in January 2022, the High Court overturned the first-instance verdict, after the appeal of the Chinese company. Lawyer Vladimir Čađenović, who represents SRK "Tara i Morača", claims that economic and financial expertise is expected, after which the exact amount of damage caused by CRBC should be determined.

"There was direct damage caused by the destruction of fish. There is also indirect damage due to the lost yield, but also lost profit for my clients due to the impossibility of issuing fishing permits. All this now needs to be determined by an economic and financial expert," said Čađenović.

"According to experts' estimates, it will take 5-10 years for the fish stock to recover to some extent after the construction of the highway," says Čađenović.

He said that, in addition to the civil proceedings in Podgorica, two criminal proceedings against CRBC and the responsible person in that company were initiated before the Basic Court in Kolašin.

In one of those two cases, at the end of last year, the court in Kolašin issued a verdict in which the CRBC and the responsible person Hei Sqiqiang were found guilty because they had started work on the construction of a coastal fortification from the surplus material created by the excavation of the Pajkov vir tunnel, without having previously filed a construction application. and prescribed documentation, which endangered the environment and damaged biodiversity.

The CBRC was ordered to pay a fine of 9,000 euros, while defendant Hei Shiqang was given a suspended prison sentence of eight months, which will not be applied unless the defendant commits a new crime within the next two years.

 

Birn.me