The Minister of Environment, Water and Forestry Mircea Fechet said on Friday, in Iasi, that he signed a financing contract through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), through which 13 dams of the Romanian National Water Administration (ANAR) will be rehabilitated.
"Without money, nothing can be done. The PNRR financing contract for 13 dams was signed yesterday. It is a financing contract of over 1 billion RON, which means that there will be less pressure on the state budget and there will be greater possibilities to finance other projects such as the Pascani hydroelectric development. (...) All the very advanced projects, whether we are talking about the Pascani dam, or whether we are talking about Rastolnita, in Mures county, where we have over 90% of works performed, in a maximum of ten days we issue the environmental agreement, all these works will be finished", said Minister Mircea Fechet.
He wanted to specify that in all these cases the current environmental norms will be respected.
"Of course we have to comply with the new directives, to have all the impact studies in order so we don't have problems later. But whether we are talking about energy security, whether we are talking about drinking water supply or water for industry or irrigation, whether we are discussing the mitigation of the flood risk, this topic will be discussed more and more often in the near future. We are obliged to finish all these works. The hydrotechnical work in Pascani represents a priority because it is in an advanced stage of the execution of the works, on the other hand, I found that another step was taken towards finishing these works quickly", said the minister of the Environment.
In his opinion, it is also a moral duty to complete these hydrotechnical constructions started and abandoned in the 1990s.
"It's about a debt we have for these works completed in a very large percentage, to complete them and use them because there are many such investments in Romania abandoned in the 1990s. I assumed this role to complete all these constructions, despite the protests, the lawsuits we have," the minister of the Environment mentioned.
He was in Iasi on Friday to take part in the investiture ceremony of the new County Council.