New bill said to allow incorporation of land into city plans
Environmental organizations have denounced loopholes in the new bill brought by the Environment, Planning and Public Works Ministry because it will allegedly enable land to be directly included in city plans and will bypass Council of State decisions. At a press conference, representatives of the environmental groups, which included the Coordinating Committee to Save the Saronic Coastline, the Attica Ecological Campaign, the Maroussi Citizens Initiative and others, highlighted the most dangerous sections of the bill, which aims to harmonize law 1650 with EU legislation and set out procedures for defining watercourses. The environmentalists pointed out that a watercourse will be marked out in the future by a decision of the current minister of the environment, and not by presidential decree, as has been the case up till now. This will prevent the Council of State from exercising overall supervision. An amendment allowing streams and rivers to be marked out by section was censured as disastrous. The amendment also contradicts a 1996 decision by the Council of State which states that «the length and breadth of a stream must be defined, to ensure that it serves its ecological purpose without hindrance.» Since the new bill will allow private individuals to mark out watercourses as well, anyone with a plot of land by a stream can hire a hydrologist and demarcate the section of interest to them, without taking into account the rest of the stream’s course. The environmentalists also denounced the fact that not one representative of an ecological organization was summoned before the parliamentary committee that debated the bill, although such a request had been made, while the vice president of the Association of Greek Surveying Offices was invited. He stated that he had participated in drawing up the bill.
