 
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
              
|
  How tiny Tichy Potok, Slovakia, stopped a big dam By Don Hopey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer -- September 7, 1998
TICHY POTOK, Slovakia -- The green Torysa River runs through this tidy, tiny village. Ran over it last year. The kind of flooding that's supposed to happen only once every 100 years devastated large swaths of central Europe. In Slovakia, it hit hardest at this village settled by shepherds in 1427 in the piny foothills of the Levoca Mountains. The storm-swollen Torysa, roiling at three times its normal 50-foot width, buckled Tichy Potok's steel bridge, inundated homes and washed out half a mile of road. It lapped at, but spared, Take Holy Mary into Heaven Greek Catholic Church, a small, immaculate, stuccoed building that since the 17th century has been the village's geographic and moral center. It spared, too, the modest village hall where Mayor Lubica Dzuganova has done her best to hold on to centuries-old Carpatho-Rusyn cultural traditions and to hold off a future that for more than 40 years was overshadowed by plans for a massive public works project: the Tichy Potok Dam. To accomplish both tasks, she has embraced a new grass-roots activism that has sprouted in this recently democratic but still largely rural nation. First proposed in 1954 by a Czechoslovakian communist government big on big projects and central control, the 200-foot tall concrete and earth dam was to span a gap in the hills just 900 meters up river from Dzuganova's village and provide water for Kosice and Presov, eastern Slovakia's largest cities. Tichy Potok and four neighboring villages were scheduled for evacuation. The four villages up river would have been flooded. Tichy Potok would have been stepped on by the dam's construction "footprint." Fear of the dam - which would have meant the end of Tichy Potok - ran much deeper than fear of flooding. "It was an old communist dream to build the dam, and a nightmare for our village and other villages in the region if it would have been built," said the charismatic Dzuganova, at 29 the youngest mayor in Slovakia and one of its few female political leaders. A struggling economy postponed construction and in 1989 the Velvet Revolution intervened. But the idea for the $200 million dam was revived by Slovakia's new democratic government and the country's powerful construction and cement lobbies.
"Tichy Potok once contained 700 people, but with the uncertainty about the dam, many left," Dzuganova said. "The dam would have reduced the river to a trickle and that river is our life." The 400 people that remained in Tichy Potok opposed the project. And with communist controls gone, opposition coalesced around a grass-roots environmental group, People and Water. The group held meetings in the region to explain how the dam would divert water to the cities and damage local supplies. "The idea was to encourage people to use their new freedoms, to tell them a dam might not be in their best interests, and they own the rights to the water and can do something for themselves," said Michal Kravcik, director of People and Water. The group proposed the "Blue Alternative," involving construction of small catch basins throughout the watershed to collect storm water runoff. By tapping into the catch basins and groundwater, the state water company would have plenty of water for one-tenth the price of the dam. "We started out as a watershed group opposing the dam and evolved into a regional development program," Kravcik said. "We did catch basin pilot projects to show there exists choices to create water sources." The Slovakian government sued Kravcik and fined the organization for installing catch basins without a construction permit. But pressure against the dam was mounting. A study showed less than ideal soil conditions for dam construction, and an opposition campaign organized by People and Water gained the support of Dzuganova and 23 other village mayors. The final straw was a referendum in which 98 percent of the residents in the affected villages opposed the dam. The Slovakian government abandoned the dam project late in 1996. It was the biggest victory to date for Slovakia's fledgling environmental movement. The flooding seven months later did not erode popular support a bit. "People were shocked to learn they had rights," said Jaroslav Tesliar, People and Water's program manager. "Under communism, the government would say it wanted to build a dam and you will move and nobody could have said a word. People knew they were living under a democratic system, but didn't know what power they had or how to use it." With the dam defeated, Kravcik's group has expanded their focus to include "Agenda 21," a program to promote sustainable use of resources, and "Village for the Third Millennium," which is training more than 400 villagers to produce traditional Slovakian handicrafts for tourists. "I give the dam's opponents 100 out of 100 on the personally brave scale," said Walter Orange, a University of Pittsburgh professor who has spent chunks of the last four summers in and around Tichy Potok, Presov and Kosice. "It's tough in this country to take on the government. When the decision came down not to build the dam it was a good lesson in civil democracy and citizen action." In Tichy Potok, now out of the shadow of the dam, there is budding optimism.
On a recent, sun-splashed summer Saturday, a day after the dedication of a new bridge that was cause for much celebration and slivovice (a heady, potent, plum brandy), two dozen children swim and fish in the newly banked river. In front of the municipal office, a crew of men mix concrete and lay sidewalk. Local girls arrange fresh flowers in the church for the next day's mass. One street over, a bull tied to a fence post challenges small cars to squeeze by. One-story wood and stucco homes sit inside fenced yards flourishing with well-weeded vegetable gardens, flowers and fruit trees. It seems an unlikely place - between the backyard rows of potatoes, cabbages, tomatoes and traditions - to find the first flower of this nation's environmental ethic. There are plans to develop new sewage treatment systems and replace wood and coal with natural gas for home heating. Still, day to day, it is cultural traditions that the people hold most dear.
A trio of stara babas (older women) are seated solidly on a bench in the shade of a gnarled tree, unofficial guards of a nearby two-room log house set up to portray a traditional Carpatho-Rusyn home life at the turn of the century. Each wears a babushka and holds a cane. They look out along the newly reconstructed river road where chickens run out from a fenced yard to peck at the feet of passersby. Dzuganova shows visitors through the church, calling attention to its new, richly gleaming iconostasis - a wall of holy pictures separating the parishoners' seating from the altar and sanctuary. The church school is next door. It was ordered closed by the communists decades ago, when education was centralized. Now Dzuganova oversees its renovation for a planned September reopening and 40 students in grades one through four. Funds for the work remain an issue. "The environment is important, but in our villages it is the cultural life that is dying," Dzuganova said, pointing out that the air is clean and, this high in the watershed, the water is good. "In the past we had local schools with teachers that lived in the community, along with a priest, forester and notary official. The communists changed all that." Showing off the school's new bathroom fixtures, drywall, windows and wiring, Dzuganova's smile comes on with the flip of a light switch. "To improve village life, the school will be here, a teacher will live here and, in addition to teaching the Ruthenian language, be able to lead activities in the evening. The songs, dances, crafts and language, will make us proud of our heritage again. Proud of our village." Proud too of the green river, flowing out of Tichy Potok's past and through its future.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
