Irish Times - A Polish Valley And A Road

[S.I. Sheehan]

Town rejects EU position after long wait for bypass



Irish Times
Tuesday, July 31, 2007



Derek Scally



POLAND: Waiting for a bypass is not just an Irish pastime. The 50,000
residents of the historic spa town of Augustow in northeastern Poland
have spent more than 15 years waiting for theirs.



More than 5,000 trucks and cars belch through the town's narrow streets
each day and residents hoped things would soon change, with work on the
bypass scheduled to start tomorrow.



The problem is that the overpass - part of the new Via Baltica highway
from Warsaw to Helsinki - would pass through the Rospuda Valley nature
reserve, prized for its rare plant and animal species, including at
least 15 kinds of wild orchid as well as eagles, wolves and lynx.



Seven years ago the EU put the Rospuda Valley on a list of protected
conservation sites and Warsaw signed up to protect it. European
Commission officials yesterday reminded Polish officials of this
commitment in light of the bypass which Brussels argues would
irreparably damage the Rospuda wetlands.



Local officials say the overpass, half a kilometre over the valley,
would cause minimum damage to the reserve and would ease noise, air
pollution and traffic congestion in Augustow.



They say the upgrade to Poland's scrappy highway network would provide
an economic boost by linking the area to neighbouring Belarus,
Lithuania, Russia and the Russian port enclave of Kaliningrad.



But, as in Ireland's Hill of Tara dispute, conservationists criticise
local officials for not considering an alternative route that avoids
the valley entirely and which, they say, would cost €17 million less to
build. Polish officials say the proposed alternative route would
displace far more farmers from their land.



Yesterday's intervention by the commission brought to a head a row that
has been simmering for months.



Augustow locals demonstrated in favour of the bypass yesterday,
clashing with environmentalists who have descended on the wetlands in
recent months.



More than 140,000 people opposed to the bypass signed an online
petition by Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper. Eight environmental groups
including Greenpeace and WWF Polska published an open letter in that
paper yesterday, reminding the government: "On entering the EU, Poland
promised to observe the community's laws."



The government has said it would pay for the controversial bypass out
of the state budget. But EU officials have already frozen several
hundred million zloty of structural funds for other planned road
projects that affect at least five nature reserves.