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Fiji Times, 28th July 2018
ENVIRONMENT experts claim Energy Fiji Ltd did not properly assess the environmental impact of raising the Wainisavulevu Weir when it began work to raise it by eight metres in 2012.
The result, they say, is severe damage to an area identified by international agencies as nationally significant for the Fiji environment.
They say even if work is started to repair the damage, it will take decades. Reports published in the 1980s by the World Wildlife Fund and included in Fiji’s State of the Environment Report and National Environment Strategy in the early 1990s, identified the Wainisavulevu area in the Nadrau Plateau as a “Site of National Significance”.
NatureFiji-MareqetiViti (NFMV) director Nunia Moko said the area was now categorised as one of Fiji’s key biodiversity areas — important for birds, forest life and ecosystem services. “It is a special area in terms of its formation as a plateau.
