A large, shallow lake in Poland could disappear if an open-cast mining project goes ahead
By Wojciech Kosc
Lake Goplo is Poland's ninth largest lake. It covers an area of 21.8 square kilometres and has an average depth of 4.4 metres. The Lake Goplo Nature Park, part of the Natura 2000 network, spreads out over more than 2,300 hectares, while the expanded protected area is more than 10,000 hectares.
The lake is also linked to the very beginnings of Polish statehood. There's some, albeit feeble, archaeological evidence that a Slavic tribe which settled around the lake might have later progressed to become the leading force in bringing together what is now the territory of Poland under more or less unitary control.
An old legend has it that a rogue king residing by the lake treacherously poisoned his power rivals and threw their bodies into Lake Goplo. He didn't get away with the crime, however, as thousands of rats emerged from the lake, cornered the king atop the castle tower and ate him.
Thus Poles thinking about Lake Goplo entertain quite a mix of factual and cultural information. But it isn't the lake's stuff of legend that made newspaper headlines recently.
Coal, jobs & energy
Lake Goplo lies close to vast lignite coal reserves, which the KWB Konin firm is poised to explore. Despite Polish plans to develop nuclear power along with a growing share of energy from renewable sources, coal is still the main source of energy driving the Polish economy.
Sitting on black and lignite coal deposits that could last for at least another century, the Polish state considers, not unreasonably, coal as a guarantee of energy security and independence.
But the task of putting coal reserves to use has been difficult for some time now, as successive Polish governments have been forced to manoeuvre between increased environmental pressure to reduce coal dependence on one hand, and powerful lobby groups on the other. The European Commission's climate package alone will cost leading energy groups billions of euros in costs. Finally, there are thousands of jobs at stake. Polish coal mines cannot sit back and allow day-to-day operations grind to halt while waiting for anti-carbon energy schemes and infrastructure to fall into place.
KWB Konin plans to explore the Tomislawice lignite coal reserve, which is named after a neighbouring village. Lake Goplo area residents, meanwhile, have teamed up with to defend area against resource extraction. The mining opponents are providing reports and empirical data from other regions where lignite coal mines have been active, showing that open-cast mining throws underground water systems into major imbalance.
Local residents and Greenpeace activists argue that open-cast mining, which sucks up water within a several-kilometre radius, will quickly eventually drain the shallow Lake Goplo completely dry.
The irony is that the drainage would occur once mining operations stopped. With the projected mine in operation, any water that pumped out of the mining pit would supply the lake. While new water supplies would be a problem in itself, the lake's existence is really at stake once production stops and Goplo's water begins to flow out toward the open cast. In short, a natural lake will vanish and a man-made lake will emerge.
Lake Goplo's defenders trace the root of the problem back to what they say was an "inconsiderate" decision from - strangely enough - Poland's Ministry of Environment, which gave KWB Konin a final go-ahead by issuing a concession to begin exploring the Tomislawice reserve.
Not up to spec
Greenpeace and local nature protection association Przyjezierze filed a motion with the European Commission to probe the legality of the concession-issuing process. The Ministry of Environment claims there was nothing wrong with the process, as all the formal requirements were complied with and the impact assessment concluded that exploration of the Tomislawice reserve posed no dangers to Lake Goplo.
The Ministry's justifications have proved far from satisfactory.
"The impact assessment for protected plant species in the Habitats Directive was based on outdated and insufficient data," says botanist Julian Chmiel, assistant professor at the department of plant taxonomy at the Adma Mickiewicz University in Poznań. "The investor only gave one month to carry out the assessment, which is not enough time to update the necessary data. Time constraints also didn't allow for full examination of the area in question. An impact assessment with such drawbacks should have never become a basis for the concession."
The clock, however, is ticking to the disadvantage of Lake Goplo and its defenders. KWB Konin is set to begin coal extraction operations in early 2011. Water is already being pumped from between the lake and the mining site. The European Commission's probe into legal issues regarding concession for the Tomislawice reserve is, however, still ongoing.
Even if the Commission concludes that EU law has been breached and issues a warning, Poland can still reject the ruling and take the case to the European Court of Justice, the only body legally capable of suspending the concession and thereby stopping coal extraction. By that time, however, the impact on the Lake Goplo might have already begun.
"Enormous amounts of water of completely different features than that in the lake will be pumped into Goplo," explain hydrologist and EIA expert Janusz Zelazinski, a long-term employee of Poland's Institute of Meteorology and Water Management. "Differences in temperature and chemical composition can cause considerable changes in the lake's ecosystem. The [mine project] investor never researched that. Lack of credible assessment of the impact that the pumped water could have on the lake is a violation of the Habitats Directive and Framework Water Directive."
For many KWB Konin miners, opposition to exploration of the reserve is representative of a "not in my backyard" attitude. But it is also a sign of the times. Only ten or 15 years ago, a new investment like a coal mine would not likely have met such opposition. The magic word "jobs" would have effectively silenced any whistleblowers. But jobs and growth are no longer such persuasive arguments - even in less well-to-do communities - for pushing through projects capable of wrecking local landscapes for decades. And this is just one more reason that decision makers should be paying greater heed to issues of sustainability.
