Putin Orders Olympic Sites Moved on Ecology Concerns
Date: 07-Jul-08
Country: RUSSIA
Author: Chris Baldwin
Putin, who has vowed that the Sochi Olympic Games will be a showcase of Russia's renewal, said a proposed bobsleigh site, an athletes' mountain village and a water supply project must be moved to another area.
The planned Olympic venue, next to a mountain nature reserve above Russia's summer resort city on the Black Sea, was criticised by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) last month as "environmentally unfriendly".
"I consider it necessary to move these venues to another site, as agreed with the International Olympic Committee," Putin said at a meeting with Russian Olympic officials and ecological activists in Sochi.
"If we are forced to choose between money and ecology -- we will chose ecology," Putin said, according to a transcript of the meeting supplied by the government. "If the balance of nature is upset then a situation can be created where no money can restore the situation,"
Some residents and environmental groups have complained that officials are rushing through building plans that infringe on the rights of local land owners and could hurt the area's delicate ecosystem.
Russia is pouring billions into the Sochi area, in the shadow of the Caucasus Mountains, to get infrastructure ready for the games, a task officials admit is a major challenge.
The United Nations Environment Programme has said Grushevy Ridge, where the bobsleigh course and competitors' accommodation had been due to be built, is home to endangered flora and fauna.
Environmental activists have also been calling for the bobsleigh site to be moved from Grushevy Ridge, and Greenpeace said it had proposed 16 alternative sites.
Putin has shown concern over the environment in the past. As Russian president, he publicly redrew a planned multi-billion dollar oil pipeline route on a giant map to take it further away from Lake Baikal.
The International Olympic Committee welcomed the decision, as did Greenpeace.
"The environment of the Caucasus has taken the first Olympic victory," Vera Bakasheva, Greenpeace Russia's spokeswoman, said in a statement. "There is every hope that the Sochi games will for certain be 'green', as the Olympic charter calls for."
Viktor Kolodyazhny, head of construction for the games, told Putin there would be no delay caused by moving the sites. Putin told officials to make sure they kept to the timetables agreed with the Olympic Committee.
(Writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Chris Baldwin; Editing by Sami Aboudi)