Magyar News, 1991. szeptember-1992. augusztus (2. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1991-10-01 / 2. szám
Magyar News Monthly Publication in Cooperation of the local Hungarian Churches & Organization Béla Lipták DUNASAURUS The main components of the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros project The Hrusov reservoir was planned as the upper reservoir while the lower one was to be created by the barrage at Nagymaros and would have extended to Gyor. The pump station where the arrests occurred is located on the bypass canal near Dunakiliti. The Slovak plan is to extend the bypass canal up to the south of Bratislava and divert the water of the Danube into this new canal, which is completely on Czechoslovak territory. In 1977 two Communist Prime Ministers, György Lázár of Hungary and Lubomir Strougal of Czechoslovakia signed an agreement to build the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Hydroelectric (GNH) plant. It would consist of two reservoirs, the upper one dammed at Dunakiliti, the lower at Nagymaros. The two reservoirs would be connected by a bypass canal in which the hydroelectric turbines would be located at Gabcikovo. The goal of the planners of this white elephant of stalinist gigantomania was not only electricity, they, at the same time, hoped to satisfy Slovak nationalist goals: obtain possession of both sides of the Danube, make the Slovak capital Bratislava accessible for seagoing ships, establish Slovak industrial settlements within the homogeneous Hungarian farming community of the region, and use the water of the upper reservoir to feed the planned Danube- Morva-Odera shipping canal. The communist leaders of the two nations at the time were Gustav Husak and János Kádár, both of Slovak origin. In 1978 the construction started, but in 1981, due to financial problems, the Hungarian side suspended the work. In 1985 the Hungarian Academy of Science recommended that the GNH should not be built. Environmentalists opposed not only the idea of moving of the Danube form its bed into a concrete canal, but also the destruction of a millennia old wetland treasure, the flooding of 50 islands and 47 square miles of forests, the turning of the region above Gabcikovo into swaps, the desertification of the region below Gabcikovo, and the poisoning of the water supplies of three million people. On the 9th of December, 1985 the organization of the Hungarian environmentalists, the DANUBE CIRCLE, received the alternative Nobel Prize and in 1986 the European Parliament voted to support the position of the DANUBE CIRCLE. It seemed that the project might not proceed, but on the 28th of May, 1986 Austrian construction firms agreed to invest $500 million and build the Nagymaros dam in exchange for the electricity it would produce until 2016. After that, construction work accelerated and the unique region where the Danube used to lap tiny islands and nourish small ri verlets was transformed into a wasteland that now resembles the surface of the moon. In 19871 had decided to come to the aid of the Hungarian environmentalists and established the Foundation To Protect The Hungarian Environment. On the 30th of October, 1988 we organized the first international day of protest ever held on an environmental issue coordinating simultaneous demonstrations in 27 capitals of the world. Soon thereafter, political transformation started in East-Central Europe, and on the 2nd of June, 1989 the still Communist Hungarian Parliament suspended the construction atNagymaros. In the spring of 1990, the freely elected new government of Hungary cancelled the Nagymaros barrage, compensated the Austrians with a payment of $250 million for the work that was only 12 percent complete. This was a profitable settlement for the Austrians and cost 2 weeks of salary to every Hungarian worker. At the same time the new Hungarian government asked Czechoslovakia to renegotiated the future of Gabcikovo by considering the establishment of an international nature park in the region by applying for “debt for nature swap” funds to finance the restoration. Unfortunately for the Danube, the new Czechoslovak government of Vaclav Havel did not have the political courage to handle the negotiations and turned them over to the separatist and nationalist government of Slovakia. The prime minister of Slovakia, Jan Camogursky, who is the brother of the president of the construction firm at Gabcikovo, declared that Slovakia will complete the project unilaterally. In order to do this without Hungarian participation, the bypass canal would be extended along the north shore of the previously planned Hrusov reservoir and the Danube would be diverted into it on Slovak territory below Bratislava. The implications are staggering as this would violate not only the GNH agreement or the international practice on the joint use of rivers, but also the peace treaty which defined the border between Hungary and Czechoslovakia (not Slovakia!) as the centerline of the Danube. In order to placate the international outrage over its actions, the Slovak government tried to explain them by claiming that completion would cost less than abandonment and that clean hydroelectric energy would allow them to shut down polluting coal and unsafe nuclear plants. Neither argument is true. The Slovak share of electricity that could be produced at Gabcikovo (continued)
