The MPs adopted in the first reading amendments to a number of legal acts by which the sale of solid sediments such as sand, gravel and stones that are obtained when cleaning navigable ways in rivers and rivulets is banned. The bill provides that all the works on the internal navigable ways will be carried out outside the period of fishing prohibition, IPN reports.
Minister of Environment Valeriu Munteanu said some of the private individuals and legal entities, on the pretext of cleaning the navigable way, whose guaranteed dimensions are not well defined, illegally extracted and sold sand and gravel from the minor bed of rivers. As the volume and depth of sediment extractions weren’t monitored, it is not possible to determine the real damage caused to the ecosystems of rivers and the country’s economy by selling these.
The minister also said that the so-called works to clean the navigable ways were executed in places where there are no ports and no navigation. These illegal acts negatively affected the quality of water, diversity of biological resources and self-cleaning capacity of water and intensified the process of destroying the minor bed and eroding banks.
The bill also stipulates punishments for the destruction of riverbeds and cuvettes of lakes, ponds and accumulation lakes.
