The General Directorate for National Roads and Motorways (GDDKiA) which has recently been accused for anti-ecological stance on the turmoil over Augustow round-about cutting Rospuda river valley, wants to prove that it meets all environmental requirements. It has announced its environment management plan enumerating what road building companies must do to protect environment. However, if new rules are strictly abided, road building may become either more expensive or longer.
“World Bank which co-finances road modernization projects requires us to implement the plan”, Andrzej Maciejewski, GDDKiA spokesman explained.
The co-financing from World Bank has been going on for two years now.
GDDKiA said that it plans to spend PLN 1.12 billion (EUR 286.9m) to renovate 600 km of roads.
“The present law should be widened with measures reversing negative environmental effects in road management and modernization”, the new plan reads.
The measures include road cleaning vehicles, reducing the emission while transporting earth, covering vehicles during the day, seeding plants along roads and close to schools, hospitals, etc.
“After the affair with Rospuda I’m not surprised. It may soon turn out that we are so strictly as far as environment protection is concerned that we completely stop building and modernizing roads”, Wojciech Malusi, the CEO of the National Economic Chamber for Road Building commented.
Construction companies stress that they fulfill environmental requirements already. GDDKiA will organize meetings before it announces tenders to ‘make sure all companies are aware of the requirements’.
(PLN 1 = EUR 0.256