Mayor seeks to raze flood-hit Slovenia village as climate change bites

After calamitous floods hit two thirds of Slovenia in August, one mayor took a radical decision — to raze most of the houses in one village rather than rebuild them.

“My role is to ensure people have a safe life,” Tomaz Zohar told AFP, and living in Letus “is definitely not safe”.

Knowing worse was to come with climate change, he said he had no choice.

August’s flooding was the worst the country of two million has ever seen, with many roads and 100 bridges washed away in 180 out of its 212 municipalities.

While it will cost Slovenia 10 billion euros ($10.6 billion) to rebuild, the knock-on effects of the disaster were felt across Europe, forcing Volkswagen to slow production at several plants after a key supplier was hit.

As the world warms, the risk of such intense downpours is rising, with building on flood plains, bad planning and the runoff from urban areas often multiplying the damage done.

Some 100 homes in Letus were flooded when the Savinja river burst its banks in August, a nightmare mayor Zohar doesn’t want to relive.

Showing his plans for Letus, Zohar said he wants to build new homes in a safe area by 2025, with the land containing the existing houses becoming a buffer zone in case of fresh flooding.

– ‘No reason to leave’ –
In Letus, where the river cuts the village in two, opinion is divided.

“We have been flooded four times so far,” said resident Darja Primozic, who wants to leave as fast as she can.

“Fear enters your bones,” she told the Delo daily. “Every time there is heavy rain you panic.”

But not everyone is ready to leave their homes.

Businessman Bojan Arcan claimed that if the river bank had been maintained better, “we would be safe, there would be no reason for us to leave”.

In the courtyard of his home, wooden furniture is still out to dry from the deluge.

Insisting that “maybe we won’t have new floods for another hundred years”, the 43-year-old has collected more than 100 signatures against the move, saying the new site for the homes is worse.

But Zohar, the mayor of Braslovce municipality of which the village is a part, is pressing on. He needs the green light and financial backing from the government for his plans, hoping it will “show the wisdom and courage to carry the project out”.

Liberal Prime Minister Robert Golob called on the country to “prepare” for “more situations like this” after the floods.

When asked about moving homes in Letus, the government’s information office told AFP it was looking for “lasting solutions… in collaboration with local communities”.

– ‘Never be the same’ –
But renowned Slovenian climatologist Lucka Kajfez Bogataj hopes they back Zohar, saying the mayor is “the only one so far who understood what is at stake”.

She said others across Europe will also be displaced by global warming.

“People believe climate change-related events are cyclic… (but in fact) things will never be the same. It is horrible, hard, but we should tell people the truth,” said the former member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

“It makes no sense re-building houses on the same river bank that will be flooded again,” added the scientist.

Slovenia’s floods have sent “a very clear message that even areas that in the past were very much under stable weather conditions, are pretty much in danger,” Slovenia’s Janez Potocnik, a former European Commissioner for the Environment, told AFP.

Scientists warn that extreme weather is becoming more intense as a result of climate change.

Due to its small size, Slovenia can set an example by adapting, said Kajfez Bogataj. If it doesn’t it risks leaving “a terrible heritage for future generations”.

“We will be able to manage it, we just need to start,” she said.