Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture of Georgia Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture of Georgia

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Disinformation is spread about the construction of a cascade of hydropower plants in Oni, Racha region. Irresponsible statements are being made by certain political groups or non-governmental organizations" declared Levan Davitashvili

"Disinformation has been spread about the construction of a cascade of hydropower plants in Oni Racha region. Irresponsible statements are being made by certain political groups or non-governmental organizations. We might call these statements treacherous and misleading , these people are deliberately deceiving the population of Georgia and residents of Racha.

All the facts that were provided are total lies. I will explain - first of all, there were rumors that mountains would explode and the river Rioni would be lost, which is a lie. No one is going to explode or remove the mountains. However, cascade and tunnel are two different topics. The disinformation also included that it was a big cascade. This is a certain generation block of Hydro Power Plant HPP that allows the pumped storage to become especially important as a balance for very large scale generation. The construction permit for HPP includes all environmental terms and conditions.

A thorough study was conducted in previous years before the decision was made. Accordingly, all aspects related to seismology, geology, and hydrology were thoroughly studied by competent experts.

Irresponsible statements are made to mislead and manipulate the population, which is definitely immoral. As for our decision, we are making minimal interventions. The Rioni River is one of the largest rivers in the country, whereby, high amounts of water flowing in streams often leads to flooding, hydrologists understand it very well, that we can’t support neither force the river to flow through a pipe. On the contrary, Rioni River retains its bed and we will definitely maintain the ecosystem.

Racha is well known and very proud of its mineral waters, we should conduct a thorough study and analysis to avoid any type of impact on these waters, before starting to carry out construction works. Therefore, we state, that this is an incorrect, misleading information and extremely irresponsible  statements’’ said the Minister of Environmental Protection and Agriculture Levan Davitashvili.