Status: permit revoked

On March 13th 2015 the starost of Tczew revoked the building permit for the Północ Power Plant. It is the second time that the investor lost this vital document – the previous one had been revoked in 2013 by the Voivodeship Court (WSA) in Gdańsk as a result of unacceptable violation of law: 73 local citizens had been denied the right to participate as parties in administrative proceedings regarding the permit.

The new decision did not eliminate the errors of the previous one. Though the proceeding took two years the competent bodies, including the Regional Directorate for Environmental Protection (RDOŚ), failed to properly analyze key issues such as:

• Impact of the project on the ecosystem of the Vistula River which is protected within the Natura2000 network.
• Impact on water resources, including the risk for wells supplying local community with water.
• Risk of water pollution due to the fact that emission limits of dangerous heavy metals, such as mercury and lead, will be significantly exceeded.
• Risk of air pollution with toxic heavy metals and particular matter which limits would be greatly exceeded.

In April 2015 29 local citizens and 6 non-governmental organizations: ClientEarth, Eko-Kociewie, Stowarzyszenie Ekologiczno-Kulturalne „Wspólna Ziemia”, Stowarzyszenie Pracownia na rzecz Wszystkich Istot, Greenpeace Polska and WWF Polska appealed against the decision to grant the project a building permit.

On 30^th December 2015 the Voivode of Pomerania revoked the decision and referred it back to the starost of Tczew, as a result of which the investor was returned to where he started from in 2011. The investor appealed against this ruling.