The Balastiere Radar, which will include effective controls, could be launched by the middle of this year, Environment, Water and Forests Minister Diana Buzoianu announced at a press conference on Friday.
„We are in quite advanced discussions and, if I'm not mistaken, the public specifications have been submitted in order to add some functions to the Ballast Plant Radar, because the last management a few months ago produced a Ballast Plant Radar from which it took out a lot of control criteria. It used to be a very nice register of all the Romanian ballast factories, but along the way it had lost all its teeth and all its claws, so to speak. This Radar no longer had any control measures, it no longer checked the quantity of aggregates that had been approved against what exactly was removed and what was put on sale. So basically, it was no longer an effective verification mechanism. We had to add on, because there is no point in launching a nice electronic register with the ballast plants if we do not have effective control behind it. I would like us to launch a ballast plant Radar which also has effective control. I hope to have it launched by the middle of this year. With these additional control measures, it should then be operational”Buzoianu said, according to Agerpres.
As regards the situation of the classic ballast plants at the national level, the minister stressed that many of them do not have authorization or have expired deadlines for these documents.
„In the case of classic ballast plants, we already know that there is a phenomenon of non-compliance with legislation. On the one hand, there are a lot of ballast plants that are operating without authorization, and on the other hand, authorizations that are given and then are exceeded. In 2025, we asked for an analysis of the control carried out by the inspectors of „Apele Române” and this analysis revealed that, in the last year, the sanctions that were applied have decreased, as well as the number of controls. It used to be a relative number of inspections, in the order of a few dozen per month throughout the country. In November, I set performance criteria for the inspectors and I told them very clearly that there had to be real, on-the-spot checks, not one or two checks in a whole month, but at least 10-15 checks. The conclusion was that, in November, after these criteria had been put in place, we managed to carry out around 750 inspections, more than were carried out in the first seven months of the year. As soon as we stop the idea of indefinitely extending these approvals, the approvals that are in force today will automatically no longer be able to be extended beyond the maximum period that was laid down”said the Environment Minister.
The National Administration „Romanian Waters” (ANAR) announced in mid-August last year that the development project of the „Ballast Estuaries Radar” application is being implemented according to the established schedule and stages, and the development of a separate schedule for the implementation, with precise deadlines, will take place after the completion of the pilot phase, which was to run until September 5, 2025.