At least one company in Albania had a construction permit for the construction of small hydroelectric power plants on the Cijevna River in the territory of that country at the time when the Government of Albania announced to the Montenegrin media that there were those interested in the construction of the MHP, but that they did not allow anyone to build it.
This is concluded from the documentation that the Albanian Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy submitted to colleagues in Montenegro, and the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Tourism (MORT) published on the official website (mrt.gov.me), with an invitation to a public hearing, which lasts until 24. February.
In October 2018, "Vijesti" published information that in the Albanian part of Cijevna, without prior consultation with Montenegro, the construction of several MHPs is underway, and that 14 such projects are planned. The Albanian Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy gave conflicting answers to the public, and in one of them, from October 11, 2018, they said that four companies had submitted an application for the MHP at Cijevna, but that none of them had received a construction permit by then and that are still considering their requests.
According to the documentation they recently handed over to their Montenegrin colleagues, the permit for the MHE "Muras" was granted on March 16, 2018, seven months before the Albanian authorities claimed that they had not issued any permits.
For a year and four months, the public has been talking about Albania's plans to build a HPP on its territory on the Cijevna, a river that partly flows through Montenegro. Although international conventions oblige signatory countries to include each other in the process, Montenegro was not previously informed about Albania's plans. A few days after "Vijesti" published information about the plans in Albania, the Montenegrin Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that they would seek their confirmation from their Albanian colleagues. Concrete steps, however, were taken only a year later, in September 2019, when a meeting of the Albanian-Montenegrin Commission for the Management of Waters of Common Interest was held in Podgorica. During the discussion on the construction of the MHP in Cijevna, the Montenegrin commission announced that the authorities in Albania did not respond in a timely, adequate, and reasoned manner to Montenegro's requests for a statement on the possible cross-border impact of the construction of the MHP in Cijevna, on Albanian territory. Preliminary environmental impact assessments were submitted to Montenegro late, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said at the time, adding that the documentation was "incomplete and has no value in a technical sense." From the department of Milutin Simović, they also said that these are studies that were made in 2016 and 2017, and that there is no technical data in them that would indicate the cross-border impact of MHP on the overall water regime.
"The studies do not contain data on hydrological, hydrogeological and geological characteristics, as well as geodetic data on MHP locations, the type of these facilities, as well as the current state and planned projection of MHP on this river," said the Ministry of Agriculture after the meeting on September 19.
The Montenegrin Commission also considered that the fact that Montenegro was not previously informed about the plans was in contradiction with the Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context (ESPO). Their Albanian colleagues did not agree with that. "The start of the procedures for the construction of these HPPs is not in contradiction with the ESPOO convention, given that this convention concerns cases of dam construction, while these projects do not foresee the construction of dams, and that a copy of the environmental impact documentation of the Ministry of Tourism and Environment was sent through diplomatic channels environment", the Albanian government's response states.
Who is building the HPP at Cijevna?
According to the documentation, which is officially available to the Montenegrin public a year and four months after the issue was opened, the construction of two HPPs - "Muras" and "Dobrinje" - is underway at Cijevna, on the territory of Albania. The construction of HPP "Vriela" in the Cijevna basin is also planned. HE "Muras" is being built by the company "Mateo & Co" on the river Cijevna Selce, which is a tributary of the Cijevna.
The facility is located in the municipality of Malesi e Madhe. The permit for the construction of that power plant was published on March 16, 03, while the works, as stated in the documentation of the Albanian government, began on November 2018 of the same year. In the document submitted to Montenegro, it is also written that the Government of Albania "conditionally" gave permission for the construction of that hydropower facility. However, it is not stated what this specifically means. One of the permits for that HPP is signed by the Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama. And HPP "Dobrinje", which is being built by the company "WTS-Enerdži", is being built in the same municipality, on the same tributary of the Cijevna. The permit application was submitted on June 01, 11, and the building permit, according to the filing, was issued on March 21, 2018.
In the documents submitted by the Albanian Ministry to the Government of Montenegro, HPP "Vriela" is also mentioned among HPPs on Cijevna, but it is not written in which phase that project is. Preliminary permission was given to the company "Selca Energji".
No work until the impact is determined
Montenegrin institutions and non-governmental organizations have previously demanded that the works on the construction of the MHP on the Albanian part of the Cijevna be stopped until the actual negative impact of those projects on the flow of the river in the territory of Montenegro has been determined.
Analyzing the documentation of the Albanian Ministry, Ksenija Medenica from the Center for the Protection and Study of Birds (CZIP) told "Vijesta" that one of the key problems is that no analysis of the cumulative effects of the construction of a large number of HPPs on the same watercourse has been done.
"The real picture of negative impacts on the lower reaches of the Cijevna is not known even now after the documentation has been submitted. The core of the problem lies in the fact that on the Albanian side there is no planning assumption or study on the possible or feasible number of HPPs on one watercourse. Two MHPs are currently being built on the Cijevna River, and the third is in the process of obtaining permits, while it is not yet known how many there will be in total," she said.
Medenica reminds that ESPOO will deal with the Cijevna case in the spring.
"The initiation of international procedures is slow and time-consuming, but at this moment it is important that the ESPOO Convention will notify the case of the Cijevna River in March. Their opinion and position on this matter will be known in September. In the meantime, it is crucial to exert pressure to establish a moratorium on the construction of MHP while determining the level of impact on the Cijevna stream that passes through Montenegro," said Medenica.
Public Hearing
The Ministry of Sustainable Development and Tourism translated the documentation they received from their colleagues from Albania into the Montenegrin language and published it on the department's website, with an invitation to those interested to take part in the discussion. Documentation is available on the site mrt.gov.me, and comments, suggestions and remarks can be sent by email to brankica.cmiljanovic@mrt.gov.me or submitted to the MORT archive until February 24.
Cijevna Canyon is an Emerald habitat and one of the candidates for the future Natura 2000 protected area. In Montenegro, the Cijevna canyon was declared a natural monument in 2017. In January of last year, the councilors of the Tuzi Municipal Assembly also adopted the Declaration on Cijevna, convinced that the construction of the MHP on the Albanian part of the course of that river will "certainly have a negative effect" on its natural habitat in Montenegro.
Bonus video:
