NGOs contest environmental permit for a murky stone quarry at Ocolis

Cluj-Napoca/ Romania, 1 April 2010 - Eleven Romanian NGOs served an official complaint (1) to the Alba-Iulia Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) against the agency's recent decision to grant the environmental permit (2) for a stone quarry situated in a commune and within two important Natura 2000 sites. If the EPA does not reverse its decision, then NGOs complaint is the first step towards a court action.

SC Kemna SRL, the project owner, is owned by the German company Kemna Construction that builds roads but also mines for road construction materials. At Ocolis which is situated in the Apuseni Mountains the project owner wishes to develop a granite quarry. The affected area includes the Ocolis commune and two NATURA 2000 projected areas (ROSPA 0087 and ROSCI0253).The proposal which foresees deforestation, blasting, the installation of large scale transportation logistics and a stone crushing plant has been vehemently contested by locals and NGOs who amongst others, point to the quarry's destructive impact to the landscape and to its biodiversity protected by the NATURA 2000 status.

On 26 March 2010 the NGOs submitted their complaint against Alba EPA's decision to grant an environmental accord to SC Kemna SRL for its granite mine proposal at Ocolis. This decision is the result of an EIA permitting procedure. According to the eleven NGOs both the EIA documentation and the procedure are riddled with serious irregularities such as:

• Applicable legislation forbids mining activities in the NATURA2000 unless the proposal is imperative for a major public interest; when it has been proven that there exist no alternative solution and when mitigation measures have been put in place to effectively maintain the coherence of the NATURA2000 network as a whole. In such instances the opinion of the European Commission is also a requirement.
• To date no Strategic Environmental Impact Assessment (SEA) procedure has been launched to assess the project's impact on the areas urban plans.
• The Alba EPA published no announcements informing the interested public about their possibility to participate at the scoping stage of the EIA procedure and carried out no consultations during the scoping stage.
• The EIA report contains serious omissions of the required information as stipulated in Order No.863/2002. These omissions include:

1. No location maps and graphic illustrations of the proposal

2. No baseline studies of the environmental factors

3. No studies about the project's impact on the main roads used for transportation

4. No studies of the proposal's impact on the commune of Ocolis and its inhabitants

5. While the EIA report contains a rudimentary study on birds, it does not say when the study was made nor does it define the parameters of where the birds were studied.

6. The EIA report contains no study (including baseline) on amphibians, butterflies, insects, bats etc. and no study on the fauna.

7. The EIA report contains no baseline study of the areas geological conditions.

8. The EIA report contains no study on the quarry's impact on water sources.

9. The authors of the EIA report failed to present an objective assessment and on several occasions added subjective opinions favouring their client, SC Kemna SRL.

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For more information visit http://salvatiocolisul.wordpress.com/ and contact the Independent Centre for the Development of Environmental Resources at +40741588270 or via email at office@centruldemediu.ro

Note 1.: Access the complaint at

http://www.ngo.ro/date/4ef160f5484c05ea6c665d19f7a161d3/plangere_prealabila_Kemna.doc

Note 2: The announcement about Alba EPA's decision can be accessed at

http://www.apm-alba.ro/anunturi/anunt_eia/eia_2010/eia_02-2010/anunt-public_eia_26-02-2010.htm