Balabenka's Spoil Is to Be Crushed 20 Kilometres Away. The Villages There Were Never Asked

Three villages north of Prague have gone to two ministries over a piece of the rebuild of Balabenka, the junction in Prague 9 where five of the city's railway stations are tied together. Bašť, Bořanovice and Zlonín say they learned only by accident that the Prague scheme would put a construction recycling plant and heavy lorry traffic on their doorstep — and that by the time they found out, the environmental screening had already been closed. Zdopravy.cz reported the dispute on 22 September.

A plant named after one village, built next to another

The documents for the Balabenka rebuild include a facility called the Líbeznice recycling line. Despite the name it is not in Líbeznice: it is to stand in the grounds of Měšice u Prahy station, roughly 20 kilometres from Balabenka itself. Material from the Prague site would be trucked out to it — up to fifty lorries a day, according to Zdopravy.cz.

The municipalities that the haulage route and the plant would actually affect were not entered on the list of dotčené územní samosprávné celky, the local authorities a project notification names as affected and which are therefore entitled to comment. Neither the Ministry of the Environment, which ran the procedure, nor Správa železnic, the state rail infrastructure manager that applied, told them the plan existed. The screening — the stage that decides whether a scheme needs a full environmental impact assessment — went through smoothly and the process ended there.

Two ministries, two filings

The three villages have put a joint position to the Ministry of Transport, arguing that the way the recycling line was handled breaches the memorandum of cooperation on preparing the high-speed line from Prague to Dresden. In parallel they have filed an appeal with the Ministry of the Environment.

That is why a joint position of the municipalities of Bašť, Bořanovice and Zlonín was addressed to the Ministry of Transport over the breach of the memorandum on cooperation in preparing the high-speed line from Prague to Dresden. At the same time an appeal was filed with the Ministry of the Environment, which ended the EIA process irregularly, already at the screening stage.

— Kateřina Nováková, mayor of Bašť

Her stated objections are traffic, dust and an open-ended timetable.

Our justified concerns are above all about the growth in freight traffic while many tonnes of material are hauled from Balabenka to Měšice on road I/9, which is already overloaded, and about the effects of operating the recycling line on its surroundings — noise and dust in particular. There is also continuing uncertainty about how long this line will actually operate and whether it will be used for building the Podřipsko high-speed section as well. We therefore need clear and open information about what its real role is meant to be and for how long it is to run.

— Kateřina Nováková, mayor of Bašť

The answers do not quite match

Správa železnic says the plant is temporary and mobile. Its spokeswoman did not say for how long.

The line is not being designed as a separate permanent structure or as an independent operating site; its purpose is limited in time to the period of construction and it is functionally tied exclusively to this project. The expected effects of the facility were therefore assessed as part of the evaluation of the scheme as a whole.

— Nela Friebová, spokeswoman for Správa železnic

On the siting, Friebová said the location was chosen "after evaluating the available areas in terms of logistical, technical and environmental conditions", with compliance with air-protection legislation and the prescribed separation distances from housing as the key criterion, which she said this site meets without reservation.

The Ministry of the Environment rejects the claim that it broke the EIA act. Its spokeswoman said the ministry worked from the list of affected authorities that the applicant supplied in the project notification, and approached the municipalities affected by the Balabenka rebuild itself; she added that Správa železnic submitted a study of dispersion and noise impacts.

The mobile recycling line is not a permanent part of the scheme but is used only for the duration of construction, and so it is subject to separate assessment and permitting.

— Jana Schillerová, spokeswoman for the Ministry of the Environment

Those two defences point in opposite directions, and the villages are standing in the gap between them. Správa železnic says the plant's effects were covered inside the assessment of the whole scheme. The ministry says the plant falls outside the scheme and will be assessed and permitted on its own. If the first is true, the villages should have been parties to the screening. If the second is true, there is a separate procedure still to come and nobody has told them when.

What is being built at the Prague end

Balabenka connects five Prague stations, and the branch of the high-speed line towards Lovosice will run through it. The rebuilt track layout will be substantially larger than today's and woven across three vertical levels — one storey more than the junction has now. The scale is the point: a reconstruction on that order produces the tonnage that has to go somewhere, and the question of where it goes has now become somebody else's argument.