Monday, November 22, 2010

World Bank financing destruction of scenic Vjosa River in Albania

7 Large Cascading Hydro-Power Plants for the Vjosa River

World Bank: If you can't built large dams in western countries with strong environmental awareness and NGO's, then turn to the third world or better yet to south-east European countries with corrupted and nontransparent governments like Albania, Bosnia, Montenegro, etc.

Vjosa River is the second largest river system in Albania. Its upper catchments include areas in Greece’s Northern Mountains, with high precipitation. Vjosa river 272 km long and annual average inflows is about 195 m3/sek. Until now, the hydroelectric potential has not yet been exploited.

Construction of 7 HPPs on Vjosa River Cascade Generation capacity up to 400 MW + HPP Kalivac*
7 HPPs on Vjosa River Cascade Generation + HPP Kalivac*


*NOTE: In 2001 a Concession Agreement BOT was made effective with an Italian group BEECHETTI GROUP, for financing, engineering, construction, management and transfer of HPP of Kalivaci.

The latest river development study (1990s) was established by Albanian Hydrogeotechnic Institute. The study defines 7 plants for the complete exploitation of the Vjosa River, with total capacity 500 MW and production of 2.2 TWh.

Albanian Government using World Bank funds has undertaken a consultant service project for preparing a pre-feasibility study and project definition for the generation potential over various rivers in Albania mainly to river Vjosa.
A working group of different Albanian experts were established for the preparation of Terms of Reference for the project, that was sent to the World Bank for their “no objection”. In December 2007 the World Bank had given no objection to ToR. In February 2007 a Bid was opened to select the winning bidder and after the evaluation process the winner was selected by the working group and was sent for “no objection”to the World Bank. The pre-feasibility study shall be completed within 5 months of the contract effectiveness.
7 HPPs on Vjosa River Cascade Generation + HPP Kalivac*


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September 29, 2015


Five years ago I set up this vjosa-river.blogspot.com, a blog with just one specific purpose - to set just one specific post, a notification, about looming catastrophe over the Vjosa.

At a time you couldn't find one website, or just one article, not even one comment against or simply referring to the fact that Albanian government already initiated unnamed project (or at least I couldn't find a name) with no less then 7 + 1 hydro-power plant system with large dams in cascading disposition on the Vjosa River.

The project, as planned, was/is complete madness - it would be, or still could be, mindless man-induced cataclysm !
As someone who is not Albanian, I hoped to provoke lacking online discussion, debate between locals and regional people and whoever would be interested.

Now I'm happy to see that the Vjosa finally gets attention which the river of that value and beauty deserves !

The VJOSA River (source: Panooramio)
 Santa