European magazine
Status: 07/17/2021 10:08 am
Albania’s unique wild rivers arouse desires. Environmentalists fear that the government wants to build numerous hydropower plants. They are pushing for the establishment of Europe’s first wild river national park.
Nikolaus Neumaier
ARD studio Vienna
By Nikolaus Neumaier, ARD Studio Vienna
It is a promise from the election campaign: A national park is to be created on the Vjosa, one of the longest untouched wild rivers in Europe. This is what Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama promised his voters. But that was before the April election. Nothing has happened since then. Critics fear that the government intends to build numerous small power plants to supply the country’s economy with energy and to attract investors.
Because of its abundance of water, the Balkans are known as the “blue heart of Europe”, and Albania is particularly rich in water among the Balkan countries. That arouses desires. According to information from the environmental organization RiverWatch, up to 400 small power plants are planned in Albania. In order to prevent this, environmental activists are now urging that a law for the establishment of Europe’s first wild river national park be passed and that the plans for the construction of small power plants be finally buried. They are supported by scientists from Austria, Germany, Italy and Albania who recently visited the Vjosa and its tributaries to collect measurable and reliable arguments for the unique biodiversity and quality of the rivers.
Albania’s water
Nikolaus Neumeier, ARD Vienna, europamagazin, July 16, 2021
Rivulets remain behind
The Shushica, an 80 kilometer long warm water mountain river in the south of Albania, is particularly endangered. The Shushica still flows untouched through a deeply cut gorge and provides a habitat for fish and numerous insects. Three dams are to be built near the village of Brataj. Ulrich Eichelmann from RiverWatch wants to prevent this and therefore organized the science expedition to Vjosa or Sushica. On an old Ottoman bridge that spans the wild Shushica Valley near Brataj, he describes the risk of destruction: behind the bridge, at the first dam, the water would be raised, in pipelines on the slope over a few hundred meters to the next Forwarded dam. There the water would be lifted up again and discharged again – and so on. Only five percent of the water remained, “but that’s nothing,” says Eichelmann.
The Albanian wild rivers are so special for the scientists who have traveled here because there are hardly any rivers like these in Europe. Since the country was sealed off for many years during the communist era, the rivers remained untouched for hundreds of kilometers. There are miles of gorges or wide gravel islands everywhere. The river water is drinking water for the farmers’ herds or provides the residents with clean drinking water.
The Vjosa is one of the rivers in Albania that local residents, environmentalists and scientists are fighting for.
Image: picture alliance / dpa
The population has other interests
Many locals categorically reject hydropower plants and dams. Also the fish farmer Qazim Belila. He lives with his family on the Sushica and needs clean, fresh water because he sells his trout to the restaurants in the area. “The village does not agree,” says Qazim – “the river is landscape, beauty. We use the water for irrigation or for fish farming, but not for hydroelectric power stations.”
On the Langarica, another tributary of the Vjosa, you can see what happens when dams hold back the water. In 2011, a small power plant was built here right on the edge of a nature reserve. The operator is an Austrian company. The energy output is just under nine megawatts. Even the operating company calls this a low capacity. At the request of the ARD studios Vienna the company explains that up to nine people are employed and that the system can also be monitored via remote maintenance from Austria. Most of the Langarica’s water is drained through a tunnel for kilometers through the mountain. The river has become a trickle. People who live from the river, like Robert Tabaku, have to struggle with the consequences. He runs a campsite not far from the confluence of the Langarica in the Vjosa and offers boat tours on the Vjosa. It used to be possible on both rivers. “The hydropower plant created problems for us because there were no more tourists,” says Tabaku.
The Langarica hydropower plant shows what can be made of the tamed and diverted rivers and what landscapes are created.
Image: picture alliance / AP Photo
Examples of landscape destruction
For the scientists exploring the Vjosa river system, the Langarica is a prime example of landscape destruction. Professor Fritz Schiemer, one of the leading experts in floodplain and river ecology at the University of Vienna, sums it up as follows: “You can see what destruction such a so-called small power plant means for the entire area. If you cut off these branches, the trunk is lost – the whole system. ”
Like many Albanians, Schiemer hopes that Albania’s unique rivers will soon be effectively protected by a national park and that new income opportunities will be created for the population. If it works, it would be Europe’s first wild river national park.
You can see these and other reports on Sunday in Europamagazin – at 12.45 p.m. in Erste.