Tourism and construction along the Shala
They have called it “Albania’s Thailand” and the “Caribbean of the Alps”, but the Shala River could not escape bad “hands”.
Unpermitted construction, felled trees, changes to the riverbed, concrete and a project for 3 hydropower plants sitting in a drawer.
The tourist season in northern Albania began this year with a high-profile promotion of the Shala River by the nonprofit organisation “Eko-Mëndje”.
On 19–20 May, a celebration was held there, with more than 300 people heading to the so-called Blini-Park on the riverbank in Shosh.
This “Park” and another a little farther on are precisely the developments built without permits. At “Blini-Park”, the intervention has even changed the course of the river.
A simple check of the “e-Planning” portal of the National Territorial Planning Agency (AKPT) makes it clear that everything in that area falls outside any plan approved by the National Territorial Council (KKT).
The green on the map designates a natural area, which means zero construction!
It is well known that no kind of construction is permitted in bodies of water, such as lakes, reservoirs, streams or rivers, for safety reasons.
Meanwhile, it should be stressed that the buildings on the Shala River were constructed after 2016, as confirmed by the satellite imagery on AKPT’s own map, where they are nowhere to be seen.
But construction there is not finished.
Looking only at the images online, we can see that the river’s course has been diverted.
In the views from above, the area “gained” by Blini-Park through diverting the river can be seen clearly.
What was it diverted with? Small machines, such as a “Mini JCB” excavator, which all 300 people who gathered on 19–20 May had the “chance to see parked by the river”.
The marks left by this excavator’s tracks are clearly visible in the photographs above.
While researching online, I was saddened to see a photograph taken by Petrit Ibrahimi last year.
Above the river, where holiday cabins were now being built in concrete, there had been beehives last year.
The hydropower project
But the irony is that those who have settled there are not the only ones with an appetite.
The state is greedy too. It “sold” this river long ago.
Last year, a concession was approved to build three hydropower plants on the Shala River, “two with diversion works and one with a dam to raise the water level”.
It is a paradox when you think about it. Instead of protecting it, organising protests and securing a legally “OK” way of using the area and river without affecting them, they go and do what they are doing to nature there… and I am certain that, when the time comes to build the hydropower plants, they will call for protests and will not lift a finger themselves.
Until then, they will count the illegal money they are making from the concrete along the Shala!