Rize Administrative Court said ‘Stop’ to two hydro electrical plants and four regulators which were granted work permit without obtaining Environmental Impact Evaluation (EIE) Report. The Court reiterated the obligation of obtaining EIE approval for such projects

Şaraksel Elektronik Anonim Şirketi which wanted to build a 10 megawatt plant and two regulators on the Hemşin Creek applied to the Ministry of Environment in 2006 with its project. The Ministry gave its approval to the project the same year while EIE reported it to be “unnecessary”.

Upon receiving the news, a group of Hemşin villagers, Çamlıhemşin and Hemşin Foundation, Culture and Solidarity Association of Rize-Hemşin Village and Hemşin Villagers’ Association of Culture, Development, Protecting the Natural Environment rushed to the Court and filed a petition at Rize Administrative Court.

The Court assigned a panel of experts from the ITU Environmental Engineering. The Report prepared by the Panel concluded that 500liters of water per second must be released to the creek so that the ecological life can be sustained in the creek where goatfish and sea trout live. On the other hand, the project stated the amount of water which must be released per second to be 150liters. Also, it had not mentioned ever how the fish would pass through the regulators.

The Hemşin villagers objected to this report, too. The report by the Rize University established that it is not enough to release 500liters of water per second for the trout species to survive and that 800liters of water per second is required to be released. Pursuant to this, Administrative Court of Rize annulled through its resolution dated December 31, 2008 the decision of Ministry of Environment which follows as “Plants can be built on the Hemşin without acquiring the EIE approval.”

The court stopped the execution of Uzundere Regulator and HEP to be built on Senoz Creek in Çayeli with its resolution concluded on the very same day. The Ministry stated that EIE report is not required for this project. When the experts found that ‘There are more than one HEP projects on the creek and 150litres flow per second is never sufficient and excavations are dumped on the edges of highway’, court adopted a motion for stay of execution.

A lawyer from Hemşin, Erol Özcan Mutlu: ‘You can generate energy either from the wind or sun but if you cut off the water of Fırtına, Hemşin and Çağlayan valleys then both the valleys and natural environment are doomed.’ Remzi Kazmaz, the spokesman of the Platform of Fellowship of the Creeks said ‘We hope that İkizdere, Fındıklı and Çayeli Valleys will be rescued soon.’