Turkish Daily News

July 2010

The ministry that approved hydroelectric power plants in the Black Sea region has admitted in an internal report that their construction damaged the environment in the latest blow to Turkey’s ambitious dam-building plans.

“Excavations … caused destruction in forested areas. Current flow and the quality of the water in streams are negatively affected as a result of filling the streambeds with soil,” said a report prepared by the body overseeing hydroelectric power plants under the Environment and Forestry Ministry and the State Waterworks Authority, or DSI, daily Radikal reported Wednesday.

The internal report, written in 2009, only recently found its way to the media. It said 15 firms that built power plants in the Black Sea province of Rize had been fined a total of 513,000 Turkish Liras for causing environmental damage.

“The Environment and Forestry Ministry tried to put the blame on firms although the ministry caused [the damage] by giving permission to build hydroelectric plants on Turkey’s streams,” Güven Eken, the head of Doga Dernegi (Nature Association), told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review. He said the fine was too small to be an effective deterrent or to pay for remediation of the damages caused.

The ministry lacks a planned water policy and does not make sufficient evaluations of the effect a dam and power plant would have on an area’s natural resources and local residents, Eken said, calling for Environment and Forestry Minister Veysel Eroglu to be immediately removed from office and a new water policy to be adopted by the ministry.

Dam projects approved by the ministry are increasingly not holding up in court. Judges have ruled against hydroelectric power plants in 33 out of 34 completed cases, issuing a stay of execution decision or canceling the construction altogether, the Anatolia news agency reported Tuesday. The court ruled in favor of only one firm, which promised to improve its environmental standards. Thirty-one more cases remain in progress.

Ömer San, the speaker of the Rivers Friendship Platform, said he believed the rest of the cases would also go in environmentalists’ favor. According to DSI and Energy Ministry data, there are 187 active hydroelectric power plants on Turkey’s rivers. San said 45 more are under construction and an additional 1,576 are in the planning stages.

According to the internal report on the Rize dams: “The environment is polluted due to the lack of measures. The plants that have started to operate do not release the required amount of water into streambeds and fish passages have never been built.” Dams can be built with “fish ladders” or other structures that allow fish to continue their natural migration despite the obstruction of the river.

Sabit Kandemir, the head of the Rize Provincial Environment and Forestry Administration, said the overseeing body that wrote the report will monitor the plant-construction sites monthly and fine firms that violate the standards, daily Radikal reported.

A DSI press official who wanted to remain anonymous told the Daily News that the fines levied against the firms are a routine procedure and the report should not be overblown. “This is an internal text and I don’t know how it was publicized. If I said all the [dam] projects are done perfectly by these private firms, it would be wrong,” he said. “But we monitor and warn these firms and fine them if necessary in order to avoid any damage to the environment.” Still, he admitted, “There can be some cases that go unnoticed by the ministry or DSI.”

A press official from the Environment and Forestry Ministry who declined to give her name said she does not have the authority to give out information about the results of monitoring reports done at power-plant construction sites.

According to Eken from the Nature Association, the DSI is in charge of operations in the water sector but has become tied to the smaller and less-powerful ministry that is supposed to monitor it. “This hole in monitoring has become filled by judicial cases since locals have no one else to complain to,” he said.