When EPL called the mayor of the village Turya Polyana, she refused to set up a community meeting. Too busy, she said. So EPL went to the village anyway. They asked where was the community hall. Then they walked along the street, asking people to come to a meeting. Guerrilla public participation.
People said they were warned not to come to the meeting. One was told she could lose her job if she came. Nonetheless, a few people trickle in to the meeting hall: 3 middle-aged women, 2 younger women, two teenage boys, one young man, 3 middle-aged men, one older man.
As it turned out, one was a woman who tried to stop the hydro project a few years ago. She organized a demonstration. But the power of money was too strong.
And so the area upstream of the village was removed from the Oshanskiy National Park and a small dam was built, and a miles-long pipe they sucked a river valley dry. In exchange, villagers were given contracts under which each household would have its electricity bill reduced by $4.50 per month. Until 2018. After that, not even that paltry sum, apparently. Did people understand that long portions of their river would diminish to a trickle or even disappear completely at times?
And was someone paid more than the ordinary villagers? During a meeting of environmental lawyers from around Ukraine and neighboring countries that ended earlier today, one participant from Kyiv wore a t-shirt with three words: “Ukraine,” it said. “Fuck Corruption.”
The passion in the meeting hall is palpable. People talk loudly. EPL’s lawyers and scientists explain the financial and biological facts. Then three villagers get on our minibus and take us to see what they have been discussing.
The road winds along the pretty little river on one side, hidden among lush trees and bushes; on the other side are poor but well-kept houses, with rose bushes and vegetable gardens, and then modest hay fields. A fruit orchard.
We pass a small, box-like building – the generating station that has captured and destroyed parts of the river above it. It is the terminus of the pipe sucking the river dry. Further along, we pass concrete abutments alongside the “river,” holding the buried pipe in place. At other places the pipe is buried directly under what becomes the much-diminished flow of a river that had been here before the Ukrainians, before the Soviet Union, before the Polish, before the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before the Galicians, before the Neanderthals.
But today the river flows. Is there really a problem? We pass happy families in swimming suits, enjoying picnic spreads.
Then we learn that the pipe was turned off 3 days ago when the company heard that EPL was coming.
We reach the dam. I photograph the water flowing over the dam and into the riverbed. The steep steps of a fish ladder, which perhaps trout can jump, but not the rest of a living river’s organisms.
On the way back downstream we stop and photograph the still-drying discharge channel, where normally the water exits the generating station instead of flowing down the river valley above it.
For these few days, the river above the station has been flowing again. After we leave, it will be turned off, the water will be diverted to the pipe, and the generator of money for someone will be turned back on.
We arrive back in the village. EPL’s senior scientist walks to the house of the primary village activist.
The rest of us wait near the bus, across the street from the village school. I wander to the side of the building and see a tall pole. At the top, a platform. On the platform a large nest. “Shestliva,” says one of our group. Good luck. It is a stork, feeding two young. But will it bring good luck, as people throughout Europe believe?
In the house the woman brings out the contract for the $4.50 monthly payment. The scientist photographs it. Back at the office, EPL’s lawyers will study its terms. Maybe they will find something they can sink their teeth into.
Maybe luck can come not from the sky but from the minds of EPL’s amazing and dedicated activists
