“The proposed location of the C0 sewage channel between Črnuče and Brod is unacceptable from the point of view of impacts on human health. We are not ordering, we are only warning, because we think it is our duty,” warned medical doctor Professor Dr Metoda Dodič Fikfak, who believes that “when something is so predictable, you can no longer turn a blind eye to it.”
On Thursday, the 16th regular session of the Commission of Inquiry for determining wrongdoing in the construction of the C0 sewerage channel in the Ljubljansko Polje aquifer area took place, where Professor Dr Metoda Dodič Fikfak, a specialist in occupational, transport and sports medicine, Head of the Clinical Institute of Occupational Medicine at the University Medical Centre Ljubljana, whose subspecialty is occupational and environmental epidemiology, was questioned.
As Slovenia does not have an appropriate, independent and sufficiently strong institution to study the impact of environmental pollution on human health, a working group was set up at the Medical Chamber of Slovenia three years ago, which, according to Dodič Fikfak, draws attention only to the most acute problems in Slovenia. Thus, the C0 channel project has not gone unnoticed.
As they considered it their ethical and moral duty to draw attention to the dimensions of what could happen in the case of the C0 sewage channel, they decided to draft a letter. According to the Slovenian Press Agency (STA), Dodič Fikafk herself is one of the signatories of the letter, “which was also supported by the expert council of the University Medical Centre Ljubljana and which the doctors addressed to a number of institutions (the government, the relevant ministries, the National Institute of Public Health – NIJZ, and other expert institutions) that they assumed were involved in one way or another with the C0 project”. According to Dodič Fikfak, no one responded to the letter, so it was also forwarded to the media. Later, they received a reply from the Municipality of Ljubljana, but it was not reassuring, she said, as they did not actually respond to any of the facts that were highlighted in the letter.
The C0 channel will – sooner or later – destroy good quality and healthy drinking water for our descendants
They then decided to turn to the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SAZU), where various experts (including civil engineers, mechanical engineers, geographers) discussed their views at this year’s consultation, specifically on the 22nd of March 2024, and together they came to the conclusion that the C0 channel “will sooner or later destroy the quality and healthy drinking water for our descendants, which is completely unacceptable and irresponsible,” and that the supply of drinking water in sufficient quantities will be endangered for ourselves as well as for our own descendants.
“The C0 sewage channel will pose a permanent risk to the microbiological and chemical contamination of Ljubljana’s water and thus a risk to human health that will only increase over time. The proposed location of the C0 sewage channel between Črnuče and Brod is therefore unacceptable from the point of view of impacts on human health,” Dodič Fikfak said, referring to the doctors’ warning in their letter. But according to the doctor, today, we can no longer talk only about the potential risk, as it is only a matter of time before this happens or for how long the biological filter will be able to withstand the loads.
In this consultation, we also learned, among other things, that sewer leakage is something that the standard even allows. “This turns our risk into reality,” she was clear. She stressed that it is not the doctors’ intention to intimidate people, but that this is something so predictable that it is simply no longer possible to turn a blind eye to this problem.
Anja Bah Žibert, an MP of the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS), also responded to the hearing in question, writing on X: “Professor Dr Metoda Dodič Fikfak before the Commission of Inquiry on the fact that an employee of the Agency for the Environment of the Republic of Slovenia (ARSO) decided not to obtain the opinion of the National Institute of Public Health when deciding whether the C0 channel needed an environmental impact assessment – with such indifference to human health, we get the Janković canal!” She also wrote: “Today’s testimony of the medical doctor Professor Dr Metoda Dodič Fikfak before the Commission of Inquiry on the C0 canal should cause serious concern. And we should all be concerned about this problem! All of us!!! The experts warn: it is no longer merely a risk to human health, it is a fact! Will this finally wake up the decision makers?!”
Ž. N.
