It's a terrible sight, it makes you sick. At the source of one of the most beautiful and cleanest rivers in Europe - it is the Una and its source near Donja Suvaja, not far from Serbs, in the municipality of Gračac - excavators recently appeared. They are there because the investor is a company with a registered address in Gračac and registered without a single employee - but as of January 2021, it has a contract with the Croatian electricity market operator on the purchase of electricity, and until 2045 a concession for the use of hydropower for the production of electricity - intended to start work on the construction of a hydroelectric power plant named "Una-mlin".
Regardless of the fact that it is a protected natural zone and an area of drinking water supply for the surrounding villages and hamlets from the water supply system, which was built with financial resources from citizens' self-contributions, back in the Yugoslav socialism of the 1960s.
However, the investor is required to have a building permit. It was issued in 2016, and extended in 2019, when the corrupt political-business network headed by Josip, who then had the last name Rimac, flourished and clothed the broader team. However, what the investor-company in question does not have, and in the meantime it has become a necessary condition for construction works of this type to be carried out, is a document on the assessment of the acceptability of interventions in the ecological network, that is, the environmental impact assessment. What, in fact, has changed.
As a member of the EU, Croatia had to adapt to the numerous standards and benchmarks that rule in that alliance, adopt a number of regulations and regulations, including in the sensitive area of ecology. For example, to become part of Natura 2000, an area of the European ecological network. On the opposite side are some other people and some other logic, they say business. They are nicely represented by the video of a man-representative of the company who, when asked by a Nova TV journalist whether he has all the necessary permits to start work on the Una spring, replies: "You came of your own accord, you didn't announce yourself to me, I don't know about you, please don't publish ".
Generally speaking, it is possible to map three macro areas affected by capitalist privatization processes throughout our post-socialist transition. After the one that is almost finished, concerning the former manufacturing and industrial sectors that had to be destroyed in order to take over valuable locations and real estate, and the one that is complex and still ongoing in sensitive areas of public goods such as health and education, it was the turn and eco-biotope field.
Thus, the very core of the biological habitat of people, animals and plants, our rivers, forests, lakes and sea. The essence of our natural existence, after we have already been largely dispossessed of the social. Therefore, it is not surprising that this very area is the scene of the strongest resistance, combat activism and engagement against privatization crime, a symbol and example of what the so-called region became the "brave women of Krušcica" near Vitez in central Bosnia.
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