The Prague Post
http://www.aaaradiotaxi.cz/index.php?xSET=lang&xLANG=2
September 8th, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Prague accommodation
Prague Art & Antiques Prague Art Prague Antiques

Home » Archives » Business

Rising tide

Cities struggle to renovate sewage systems before EU deadline

February 27th, 2008 issue

KURT VINION/THE PRAGUE POST
Prague's current water purification plant in Bubeneč will undergo serious renovation, but will most likely not meet the EU deadline.
enlarge
Follow the slurry of Prague’s human excrement as it winds beneath the city’s cobblestones and it all leads to one place: Císařský ostrov, an island facing Stromovka Park and Prague Zoo. The island’s western side hosts the city’s central water treatment plant, one of Europe’s largest, treating 95 percent of the capital’s sewage.
The plant was built in the 1960s close to an admired sewage plant designed by the British engineer William Heerlein Lindley. Like Lindley’s plant, which is now a museum, the current facility has become worn and outdated.
Operating the plant is like driving an old car at almost full throttle all the time, and you need it to go faster, said the plant’s operation manager, Milan Páleníček. A new plant is needed and needed fast.
“With the existing technologies and dimensions, the water treatment plant will be unable to meet requirements that will come into force by the end of 2010,” he said.
Time is running out for much of the country’s aging sewage infrastructure. As part of its accession to the European Union, the Czech Republic pledged that by the end of 2010 it would upgrade the systems of towns with more than 2,000 residents.
Despite that pledge, 134 municipalities out of more than 500 are still unprepared to build or renovate their sewage systems, a recent government survey discovered. “A significant number of those municipalities have not even started preparation work,” Agriculture Minister Petr Gandalovič said Feb. 4.
The delays for many of these plants, including Prague’s, partially stem from lengthy contracts municipalities have signed with private sewage management companies, making EU subsidies more difficult to obtain.
The Czech Republic could face a fine for failing to improve its sewage systems to EU standards by the set date.
Prague is the highest-profile laggard. Although the city’s project for a new plant, which will supplement the renovated existing facility, was planned several years ago, it has stirred protests among environmental and civic groups.
The project came to a standstill, and the new plant’s challengers fear the negative impact it will have on the city’s landscape and environment.
“The previous Prague political representation completely ignored people’s opinions,” said Jan Bouček, head of the City Hall team in charge of pushing the plant’s construction forward. “They just had a plan and wanted to push it through without discussions with the public.”
Current preparations are being made in cooperation with civic groups, Bouček said. These preparations have seen the project morph from a multistory factory complex to a facility hidden underground, surrounded by a bicycle path and parks.
Bouček hopes the project, worth 10 billion Kč ($581 million), will receive all the necessary permits by the end of this year, with construction beginning by April 2009.
“It’s obvious we won’t meet the deadline,” he said. “The new water treatment plant could be completed by 2012 at best.”
Until that time, Prague has to contend with the existing inefficient water treatment plant, which, as Bouček points out, accounts for 30 percent of the Czech Republic’s overall sewage pollution.
Even with a revamp made after disastrous floods hit the plant in 2002, its performance lags behind, with Prague unable to hit its mark for limiting nitrogen and phosphor in its processed water, Páleníček said.
Frozen sewage subsidies
The government estimates the cost of revamping the country’s sewage systems will reach 49.1 billion Kč; two-thirds of this expense could be covered by EU subsidies.
However, these EU funds have proven to be beyond the reach of some municipalities, including Prague. These cities and towns hold what some call “disadvantageous” and “excessively long” contracts with private water utility firms.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, fears that by providing money to projects in those municipalities, it would be untowardly subsidizing private enterprises. The EC has repeatedly criticized the Czech Republic for the contracts.
Last fall, the Environment Ministry and Brussels agreed on a compromise that unblocks EU subsidies to municipalities with contracts signed until 2022, while still favoring towns that have rented their water systems for shorter periods.
The operator of Prague’s water infrastructure is Pražské vodovody a kanalizace (PVK), a subsidiary of France’s Veolia. Originally, it was slated to manage the city’s water supply until 2013. In 2006, City Hall signed a controversial amendment extending the contract through 2028.
That amendment put dreams of an underground sewage plant in jeopardy and has complicated the modernization of the city’s 15 smaller water treatment facilities, which will cost 5 billion Kč to upgrade.
“The only way to tap EU funds is to change the Veolia contract or the subsidy rules,” Bouček said. Prague is now negotiating about these possibilities, he noted, adding that, if talks fail, the city is ready to finance the project through a Veolia loan.
Petr Štěpánek, the Prague councilor responsible for the water treatment plant project, did not return calls for comment on the negotiations, by press time. Veolia said it knows of no changes to the contract being prepared.
The Environment Ministry has ruled out any future changes to the funding rules. “The ministry will in no way seek out options to enable public funding of projects based on contracts expiring after 2022,” said spokesman Jakub Kašpar.
Despite dragging sewage upgrades in municipalities across the country, the ministry sees the original deadline as tight but still feasible.
“Moreover, we want to talk with the [EC] about the possibility of accepting sewage modernization projects begun before the end of 2010 as meeting the deadline,” Kašpar said.


Other articles in Business (27/02/2008):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.