Many private investors are entering the race with the carbon goal, for which the government of Republika Srpska (RS) grants express permits. The inhabitants of several Potkozarje villages rose up against the exploitation of coal.
“It is a priority on which our further development is based, as an area in which there is a large capacity for the development of new projects and a greater inflow of money into the economy”, was the statement of the relevant minister in the government of the RS, Petar Djokic, in front of 400 participants of the conference on the use of solar energy, few days ago. Taken out of context, this statement could be used as an explanation for the moves of the authorities in the RS when it comes to coal mining, considering the number of potential mines that are waiting for concessions to start mining.
“I’m sorry that you can’t educate people about potential dangers. They only have numbers spinning in their heads, and the question is whether it is worth everything, the terrain and the nature”, says Slobodan while showing the area that should include the mine, if the research goes in favor of the investor.
And apparently they will, considering that according to the available documentation from the eighties, it is an area that has up to two million tons of coal. Thus, the local population on the main road Prijedor – Knezica faced a problem over a hundred years old, when a mine was opened in this locality immediately after the fall of Austria-Hungary, but was quickly closed.
In mid-January of this year, the Government of the RS granted a concession for the start of research on this location for the exploitation of brown coal, to the company “Drvo-export” from Teslic. Research is ongoing, but as the locals claim, pressure is being put on the local population in order to gain possession of what a larger number of plots in that location.
“They knew all that. They probably came up with that information because it is impossible for someone to just get into this whole story, buying land, and there is nothing there,” explains Slobodan, whose plot is in the very center of the plan that had access to.
Poison gas wells
They claim that most local residents do not want to sell the property, fearing landslides and destruction of nature, considering that the entire area was once a mine, which was closed more than a hundred years ago precisely for safety reasons.
“I remember as a child, drilling was done on my plot in the 1980s, and those sulfur fumes ignited and I don’t know what else, it burned for two days. People have no idea what that mine will look like, that it will be 50 meters deep and that his house will look down from above and that it will collapse,” says Miroslav Curic, one of the locals and president of the local community.
Investor: “We follow all procedures”
“Everything is according to the law,” the investor told, confirming that the procedure has been initiated before the line ministry for obtaining a concession for the exploration of coal deposits at the Bukova Kosa site near Prijedor.
While waiting for the final decision and the legal resolution of the situation, for which is not known whether it will delay further proceedings, the locals have no choice but to keep fighting. They are saying that they will not give up, and one of the loudest, perhaps the only excavator with a degree in academic painting, Miroslav Stakic, says that there is no money for which he would sell the property, and that they do not need Rio Tinto in Potkozarje, DW reports.
E.Dz.
