“We have mountains yet we breathe smoke; our children are suffering from a lack of fresh air,” Blagoj tells BIRN.
The city’s poor air quality is attributed largely to the activities of the REK Bitola mining and energy complex, a massive industrial and energy facility which exploits low-calorie coal from the surrounding area to power its operations. Lignite is the lowest-calorie type of coal, which due to its composition, including sulfur and nitrogen, emits large amounts of dust particles when burned in coal-fired thermal power stations.
The thermal power station at Bitola is designed to operate on lignite. Worse, it does not have desulfurization facilities to remove sulfur dioxide (SO2) from exhaust flue gases. A report released by Bankwatch and CREA in September 2021 revealed that REK Bitola 1-2 was regionally the fourth highest SO2 emitter in 2020, pumping out 3.3 times as much as allowed.
“In terms of sulfur emissions, REK Bitola is responsible for over 90 per cent of all sulfur oxides emitted at a national level,” claims Eco-awareness Skopje, a centre for environmental research and information that pays particular attention to the use of coal as an energy source and its negative environmental impacts.
Yet the situation for citizens of Bitola – and the whole of North Macedonia – is getting worse, not only from an environmental perspective but from a cultural preservation one too.
Blagoj and his fellow protestors were also demonstrating against the expansion of the Bitola thermal power plant. This project threatens to exacerbate not just the already severe air pollution crisis that blights Bitola, but nestled in the vicinity of the new Zivojno mine that will feed the power station is Vlaho, the oldest Neolithic settlement in North Macedonia which is rich in archaeological treasures as well as lignite.
The archaeological site of Vlaho has thus become the centre of a growing battle between, on one side, the central and local state authorities, and, on the other, archaeologists, eco-activists and local residents.
Serious questions are now being asked about the company awarded the concession to build and operate the Zivojno mine and the authorities regulating its operations after local archaeological experts alerted the public to the large-scale destruction of historical heritage at the site and a court case exposing the company’s culpability in that.
The court fined the company involved, but the law only allows for a paltry penalty, in this case just almost 6,000 euros – an insignificant amount compared to the irreparable damage done to Macedonian historic heritage, say archaeological experts.
“What they dig up in Vlaho will exterminate us in the end,” sighs Blagoj.
Neolithic artefacts wrapped in lignite
This situation where the need for energy and the preservation of cultural heritage are in conflict has arisen because of the significant reserves of lignite found under Vlaho, which is nestled within the Zivojno underground and surface coal mining area.
The Zivojno site is a well-known coal deposit, with the national electricity producer Elektrani na Severna Makedonija, or ESM, putting the estimated exploitable reserves at 53 million tonnes in its Development and Investment Plan 2018-2022.
According to Global Energy Monitor, there are plans to produce 1 million tonnes in the first year of operations at Zivojno within the area of 25 hectares, increasing the area by another 25 hectares later and increasing production to approximately 2 million tonnes per annum.
The decision to initiate the procedure for allocating the land for the potential concession mining site at Zivojno was officially announced in the Gazette on July 4, 2019.
As part of the decision, the government was required to form a commission responsible for facilitating the public call and developing the tender documentation, among other duties. Subsequently, following the approval of the tender documentation, the concession was granted through a public auction conducted electronically.
The decision to grant the concession to JMP KOP International DOO Bitola was officially finalised and published on January 28, 2020. It explicitly specifies the designated concession area, the concession period’s duration (six years), and the stipulated amount payable to the state by the company.
On April 7, 2022, an environmental report by the electricity company ESM was published on the Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning’s website, as this project “is categorised in the group of projects for which it is mandatory to have an environmental impact assessment.”
Then, on September 27, 2022, the central government agreed to a proposal from JMP KOP International to expropriate agricultural land in Zivojno that was held in private ownership. The purpose of this land expropriation, according to the company, was to “facilitate the provision of public services within the energy and raw materials sector”. The positive decision, as recorded in the minutes of the 85th session of the government dated September 27, 2022, is available on the government’s website.
While JMP KOP International’s proposal to expropriate the land was accepted by a vote at the government meeting, the lack of any company contact information, such as an address, email or phone number, in the application raises concerns about openness and transparency.
BIRN’s efforts to contact JMP KOP International turned up an address for the company’s headquarters located at 24/A- Dimitar Ilievski Murato Street, Bitola. Previously, the company’s headquarters were in the Macedonian capital of Skopje. The owners of the company are Panagiotis Anastasiadis and Drilon AjdinI, about whom there is little publicly available information.
BIRN repeatedly called JMP KOP International for comment, but no one answered the phone on any occasion.
JMP KOP International began excavation work in the Zivojno mining area in November 2022.
Yet problems soon began to emerge.
Destroying the past and future
In February of this year, public anger erupted when it materialised that the initial activities of JMP KOP International to open the Zivojno mine, carried out between November 2022 and March 2023, had caused significant cultural destruction at the Vlaho site.
According to archaeologists, the activities resulted in the demolition of the eastern periphery of the site, while damage to archaeological layers in its northern periphery was also incurred.
Thanks to geomagnetic scanning of the entire site carried out by the Administration for the Protection of Cultural Heritage before mining activities began, there is enough information about the archaeological contents and the scope of the Neolithic settlement to make a precise assessment of everything that has been destroyed.
“It is about a huge number of Neolithic pots, house models, sacrificial altars, figures, jewellery, bone tools, axes and knives – i.e., objects that people in prehistory used in their daily activities, as well as for rituals,” Dr Goce Naumov, head of archaeological research at the site for the Center for Prehistoric Research, tells BIRN.
Naumov believes that, taking into consideration the leading technical achievements of Neolithic artisans in Pelagonia – a plain shared between North Macedonia and the Greek region of Macedonia – some of the destroyed artefacts could be considered masterpieces of their time.
“It also applies to destroyed buildings – i.e., dwellings and workshops made of clay – which represent a remarkable reflection of Neolithic architecture,” says Naumov.
“In that respect, the damage is of huge proportions, and the value of the destroyed artefacts and buildings is enormous because it refers to millions of objects and hundreds of buildings,” he adds.
Eco-awareness, the NGO, also criticised the environmental impact assessment (EIA) carried out and published on April 7, 2022.
“The project for the opening of the Zivojno mine received a work permit based on a written project which is an incomplete and insufficient document analysing the impacts [of the mine] and giving protection measures,” Ana Cholovic Leshoska of Eco-awareness tells BIRN.
Eco-awareness claims the project to open the Zivojno mine should have required a more thorough EIA, covering both socio-economic parameters as well as cultural objects, due to the nature of the activity itself and the fact that the project was in a completely new, undisturbed location.
The NGO argues that had such a full EIA been carried out, the subsequent damage to the Vlaho site and its archaeological riches could have been avoided.
Residents of the surrounding villages, environmental activists and – most of all – the archaeologists say they all worked hard to emphasise the importance of carrying out a comprehensive archaeological survey before any large-scale industrial could begin at the site.
“Among other things, the holders of the specified permission [JMP KOP International] were initially told that it is best to have this site completely exempted from the concessionary field,” Dr Mary Stojanova, director of the NI Institute and Museum Bitola, tells BIRN.
Yet despite these warnings from competent institutions like the NI Institute and Museum Bitola, whose primary is the safeguarding, organising, scholarly analysing and showcasing of cultural heritage in the Bitola Municipality, the concessionaire company went ahead with its excavation activities – and in doing so destroyed a significant part of the archaeological site.
It remains unclear which authority, whether at the power company ESM or local government, gave the go-ahead to JMP KOP International despite the suggestions made by the NI Institute and Museum Bitola, which is ultimately responsible for the Vlaho archaeological site.
On March 10, the NI Institute and Museum Bitola provided an expert opinion confirming that any mining activities in the specified concession field at Vlaho should only be carried out after the prior completion of protective archaeological research.
Minimum penalty for maximum damage
The scandal took a new turn in June when the Bitola public prosecutor’s office requested a court hearing on a proposed settlement over the damage done to the archaeological site at Vlaho that had been struck with JMP KOP International and an individual within the legal entity, a manager named only as G.S.
The agreement, which was negotiated between the prosecutor’s office, the court and the defendant, reportedly included a conditional sentence of a year in jail for the company manager G.S., suspended for three years if several obligations are respected by the company.
These include the legal entity not undertaking any coal exploitation activities in the area until protective archaeological research at company expense is completed, in accordance with the guidelines and directions laid down by experts from the NI Institute and Museum Bitola and the Administration for the Protection of Cultural Heritage. After the research is completed, exploitation activities at the localities should be carried out only in accordance with what was determined by the protective archaeological research.
The company is also obliged to provide financial resources for three years of research and allow the immediate archaeological supervision by an expert chosen by the NI Institute and Museum of Bitola for the entire planned scope of exploitation.
Finally, the company was fined 360,000 denars (5,850 euros), and has to reimburse legal and other associated costs related to the case.
Archaeological experts, NGOs, the public and media have all since questioned the proportionality of the sentence agreed between the parties given the scale of the irrevocable destruction of the site.
The latest research by archaeologists, confirmed to BIRN by Dr Naumov, showed that the damage done to the historical heritage far exceeds the amount that the parties agreed should be paid out in penalties.
“We will have more extensive knowledge and information about this [first] phase of the research after our colleagues manage to refine the results of the recently completed protective archaeological research,” Dr Stojanova of the NI Institute and Museum Bitola tells BIRN.
Unanswered questions but a loud message
Although the scandal over the damage at the Vlaho site leaves many questions still unanswered, Dr Naumov says the affair highlights important issues about the country’s attitude towards the care of its historical wealth.
“The damage is enormous, because these items are forever destroyed and we will never have the opportunity to study and protect them,” the archaeologist says, adding that during the mining activities millions of artefacts were removed from Vlaho, fragments of which are still visible in the places where the digging was carried out.
The whereabouts of those items remains to be discovered.
