By: Nova24tv.si
The Minister of the Environment and Spatial Planning, Polona Rifelj, has announced that she will propose to the Government of the Republic of Slovenia to withdraw the authorisation granted to the State Attorney’s Office and to abandon the procedure in the C0 canal case before the Supreme Court. With this, she wants to enable a faster final decision in one judicial procedure, without years of duplication.
In a post on X, she emphasised that for her, the protection of people’s health and clean drinking water remains the highest value. “An environmental impact assessment should not be controversial for anyone who wants the project’s impacts to be decided on the basis of expertise, facts, and applicable law,” she wrote.
Her announcement comes a day after the Domovina portal revealed that the State Attorney’s Office is still insisting on a proposal to allow a revision of the Administrative Court’s ruling. According to the portal, the proposal for revision was drafted during the previous government, and a successful revision could once again eliminate the obligation to conduct an environmental impact assessment. At the same time, the portal pointed out that the new government, under the State Attorney’s Office Act, can intervene and demand the withdrawal of the legal remedy, since the State Attorney’s Office is bound by the government’s position. The question arose as to what Minister Polona Rifelj would do in this matter.
The minister had already explained the legal situation earlier, on July 24, on X: according to the Administrative Court’s ruling from April 2026 and the repeated procedure at the ministry, it currently stands that an environmental impact assessment must be carried out for the C0 canal. Meanwhile, the State Attorney’s Office before the Supreme Court is still defending the position of the previous government, namely that the decision stating the assessment is not required should apply again.
The long‑running dispute over the canal across the aquifer
The C0 canal is a project of the Municipality of Ljubljana under the leadership of Mayor Zoran Janković. It is a connecting sewage pipeline intended to channel wastewater from Medvode and Vodice to the central Ljubljana wastewater treatment plant. The route runs across a water‑protection area and the Kleče aquifer, which supplies drinking water to more than 300,000 residents of Ljubljana and its surroundings. Environmentalists, hydrogeologists, and parts of the professional community have been warning for years about the risk of drinking‑water contamination in the event of pipe leakage. In 2020, the Slovenian Environment Agency (ARSO) decided that an environmental impact assessment must be carried out for the project and that an environmental permit must be obtained.
The previous ministry (during Golob’s government) annulled ARSO’s decision and ruled that an environmental impact assessment was not required. In April 2026, the Administrative Court upheld the lawsuit filed by the Alpe Adria Green organisation, annulled the ministerial decision, and thereby reinstated the obligation to conduct the assessment. In the repeated procedure, the ministry under Rifelj rejected the request of the Municipality of Ljubljana on 15 July 2026 and confirmed that the assessment is required. Parallel court disputes are also underway, including those concerning the establishment of easements on private land, where landowners succeeded at the Administrative Court, opening the possibility of demands for the removal of already constructed parts of the canal.
With the announcement of withdrawing the authorisation from the State Attorney’s Office, Minister Rifelj is opening the way for the procedure before the Supreme Court to conclude and for the decision requiring an environmental impact assessment for the C0 canal to remain in force. The government will decide on the proposal in the coming days.
