By Niki Kitsantonis
Akrini is a village in northern Greece peopled by the descendants of refugees who fled their homes near the Black Sea when war broke out with Turkey early in the last century. Now the villagers want to flee again.
Akrini sits just 3.5 kilometers, about two miles, from the smog-spewing towers of Aghios Dimitrios, Greece's largest lignite-fired electricity plant, which emits more carbon dioxide than any other coal plant in Europe, according to the conservation group WWF.
Akrini is also 3.5 kilometers from a lignite mine that covers 7,000 hectares, about 17,297 acres. The village is surrounded by mountains of toxic ash produced by the plant. Residents believe the ash has provoked widespread breathing problems and a steady rise in deaths from cancer and heart disease in their village and they are lobbying the state electricity board to relocate the 1,000-strong community.
"First our grandparents became refugees when they were forced out by the Turks," said Alexandros Sargiannidis, a municipal councilor in Akrini. "Now we feel we are being forced to become refugees in our own land."
Akrini is not alone. It is one of several villages in Greece's electricity-producing hub in the northern prefecture of Kozani — home to five power plants that supply 70 percent of the country's electricity — where air pollution levels worry ecologists and health workers.
Similar problems have been reported in villages around Greece's second largest lignite plant, in Megalopolis in the Peloponnese. In one of those villages, Valtetsi, air radiation levels are four times above normal because of "airborne ash containing radioactive isotopes," according to a 2002 study by the National Technical University in Athens.
The state electricity board, PPC, says it "respects environmental laws to the letter" and says pollution levels in Akrini are not high enough to justify the residents' request for relocation. "There are other villages that are even closer to our power plants," said Constantinos Melas, the mine director of the electricity board.
But instead of curbing its use of low- grade lignite, in line with a European Union drive to curb the carbon dioxide emissions responsible for global warming, the electricity board is planning to increase its nationwide lignite operations, including an extension in Kozani that would bring the mine and the mountains of ash even closer to Akrini.
"We are already surrounded," said Sargiannidis, who also heads a village association that is lobbying against the electricity board's mining policies. "This is outrageous."
Locals have taken their case to the European Commission. Sixteen villages, including Akrini, appealed for help in October 2004. A response in February 2006 merely noted that the data supplied by the Greek government and the electricity board had not been adequate for a final assessment.
The European Union environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, who is Greek, declined to comment on the issue, saying that the commission cannot judge individual aspects of a member state's energy plan. But on a visit to Athens on Feb. 22 Dimas warned Greece to reduce its carbon emissions and embrace cleaner energies or face "irreversible consequences."
Environment Minister Giorgos Souflias countered that Greece was not the EU's worst pollution offender. But he also described the electricity board as Greece's most polluting manufacturer due to its reliance on lignite.
Residents of Akrini have vowed to block conveyor belts carrying lignite to the Aghios Dimitrios plant — as they did last July — unless the electricity board agrees by March 31 to help them relocate.
"They cannot supply Greece with electricity at the expense of our health," Sargiannidis said. The fact that villagers had mortgages on homes whose value had plunged since the coal plant started operating in 1985, he said, made it difficult for them to finance their own move.
The electricity board has helped move two neighboring villages to gain access to underground lignite deposits, but it says there is no reason to move Akrini "because it has no lignite" and "no pollution problem."
As a concession, the board has had metal coverings placed over the ash- bearing conveyor belts and new ash-retaining filters installed in plants. It also asked the Kozani Technical College to conduct a new pollution study. A previous study by the college, conducted last year at the behest of villages, showed that the average daily presence of air pollution particles known as PM10 was 75 micrograms per cubic meter, 50 percent above an EU limit of 50 micrograms a cubic meter.
Some scientists contest the utility of such studies. "There is no point measuring air pollutants," said Panayiotis Becharakis of Athens University's physiology department. "We should determine what consequences these pollutants have on people's health."
An analysis of local registry office archives, conducted by Sargiannidis's association, shows that deaths from cancer and heart disease in Akrini doubled from 2001 to 2006 and now account for 80 percent of all deaths in the village. National Statistics Service data show the cancer fatality rate in Akrini is at least double the national rate.
Then there are breathing problems. "Recent research shows that an extremely high percentage of children living near power plants in Kozani have respiratory problems," said Dimitris Ibrahim of Greenpeace's Athens office, "and studies in the United States show that high PM10 emissions reduce life expectancy by an average of 14 years."
Residents of Akrini see those trends reflected in their community. Evgenios Kazantzidis, a truck driver, has lost four members of his family, including his wife, to cancer in the last 10 years. "I want my three children and six grandchildren to get out of here," he said.
Maria Papadopoulou, whose husband drives a truck removing ash from the local plant for dumping, has three daughters, 7 to 18, all with allergic rhinitis, a condition resembling chronic hay fever. The family refrigerator is stocked with medicine for their ailments.
Instead of relying on lignite, ecologists say, Greece should work on improving its poor record in exploiting its renewable energy sources.
In 2005, lignite accounted for 60 percent of Greece's power production and renewable energy accounted for 12 percent (mostly hydroelectric). The rest came from imported oil and natural gas. "Greece has tremendous sun and wind potential," said Ibrahim of Greenpeace.
There has been some progress. Under EU pressure to produce 20 percent of its power from renewable energy by 2010, the government has earmarked €2.5 billion for cleaner energy in a draft law due to be submitted to Parliament in April.
The law calls for the installation of 2,500 wind farms with a combined energy production capacity of five gigawatts (the Aghios Dimitrios lignite plant has a capacity of four) and the creation of small hydroelectric projects, solar parks and biogas plants.
Ecologists say such initiatives are encouraging but do not offset the damage caused by Greece's reliance on fossil fuels. "It's simple," said Lazos Tsikritzis, head of the Kozani Ecological Movement. "We have to stop burning lignite."
(International Herald Tribune, 01/03/2007)