NH2O
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Prague – Petr Nečas’s cabinet today approved the release of further funds for the construction of the Nové Heřminovy reservoir that is intended to be part of the flood-prevention measures on the upper reaches of the River Opava. If there is enough money in the budget in the coming years, the dam should be built in the years 2016 to 2020. The total cost will be CZK 7.5 billion.
16-02-11, Czech Television
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“We still insist that a more viable solution could have been found if all the options for flood-prevention measures on the River Opava had been assessed, and not just the dam. They decided to go for one single giant project to protect two villages and one town.”
Radek Sijka (ƚ2015), mayor of Nové Heřminovy
11-04-14, Czech News Agency
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“I admit that at this moment the preparation of this project has come so far, with 90 percent of the land bought up and more than half a billion koruna of public money spent, that I almost can’t image stopping the project.”
Marian Jurečka, agriculture minister of the Czech Republic
11.04.14, Czech News Agency
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“If the municipality of Nové Heřminovy thinks they can still stop the construction project or scrap the dam, I regard that as absolutely unrealistic right now, as the state has already invested a huge amount of money in it. We have already bought up land for around CZK 450 million, and other money has been spent on the project preparation. There really is no way back any more.”
Jiří Pagáč, managing director of Odra River Basin Administration, state firm
15-10-15, novinky.cz
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Nové Heřminovy is a village between Krnov and Bruntál in the northeast of the Czech Republic. It is an unremarkable, but perhaps all the more important for that. For me it is an inspiring and simultaneously tragicomic scene with an uncertain future where, despite all the tension and vanity of human activity, I found what might be the most fundamental thing: an ordinary way of life and place to live in the best sense of the word. In the coming years, part of the village is supposed to give way to a dam. You now have before you the first publication of the NH20 photographic series aimed at monitoring this intervention in the countryside and human lives.