Ukraine’s project to build hydropower plants on the Nistru forms part of the Ukrainian strategy for developing the energy sector starting with 2016. According to Dorin Dushcheak, deputy minister of the environment in 2014-2015, as long as the given project is on the list of priorities of the neighboring country, this can be considered only suspended, not yet abandoned. “Ukraine can anytime resume the project in the way in which it was planned to be implemented before 2018,” Dorin Dushcheak stated in a public event, being quoted by IPN.
The ex-deputy minister noted that two studies of the environmental impact and the social impact of the Upper Nistru hydropower complex should be carried out till the end and decisions should be adopted based on the conclusions and in the interests of the people from both sides of the Nistru. According to him, about 5 million people in this region are supplied with drinking water from the Nistru. “If the project is implemented in the initial variant, the security of the water supplied to this people will be in danger, including of the inhabitants of Chisinau municipality,” he stated.
The six hydropower plants projected to be built on the Nistru, alongside another two that exist in Novodnestrovsk and upstream of Novodnestrovsk, cannot satisfy at least 3% of Ukraine’s necessities, said Alecu Reniță, president of the Ecological Movement of Moldova. According to him, the Ukrainians have an increased interest in water as they realize that owing to climate change, western and southern Ukraine is poor in water and the Nistru plays a special role in supplying water to a number of big cities.
Alecu Reniță noted the river can be managed so that everyone has water and the Nistru remains alive. However, this will not be possible if Ukrainian erects barrages as part of the project to build the Dnestrovsk hydropower complex as the water in the lakes that appear when barrages are built evaporates and turns into mud, being a primitive model of damming. On the contrary, the lake should be helped to have inundation and will be then very well for the river and the population.
Energy expert Victor Parlicov said the project was stopped especially because Ukraine and Moldova signed Association Agreements with the EU, which stipulate clear, universal rules that actually served as a reason for stopping the initiated processes. The problem of the project resides namely in the fact that it focuses on the construction of barrages and this generates ecological problems and changes the dynamics of the life of a river.
