The Ministry of Transport has set up the expert committee for the mercury submarine U-864. The committee lacks representation from an environmental organisation. Kurt Oddekalv, head of the Norwegian Environmental Protection Association (NMF) believes that the organization should have been part of the expert panel that will now decide the fate of the mercury submarine and the Atlantic Ocean.
I think we should sit on the panel because we are the only independent environmental organization that has worked continuously on the issue and put in a large number of working hours and spent approximately NOK one million on the issue since 2004.
Kurt Oddekalv believes it is important that he or someone else in NMF gets a place on the expert panel.
NMF has now asked the Ministry of Transport for the opportunity to obtain observer status in the expert panel, and has been working for some time to arrange a meeting with the panel when it is in place.
We see that there is a broadly composed panel from the professional offshore industry and several experts from various research environments. We note that Sylvia Frantzen, researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research, is still taking part in mercury measurements, and that is good for continuity.
Øyvind Voie from the Norwegian Defense Research Institute -FFI takes care of the risk analysis from explosives. We believe it will strengthen a choice to raise the wreckage and complete clean-up. The traditional consulting companies (Multiconsult, Rambøll, NIVA, Norconsult etc.) that have been linked to the submarine case are now out, and that is positive. There are also no representatives from the Coastal Administration, and that gives hope for a good solution, says Kurt Oddekalv.
We have always said that lifting is the only solution, and we have been on a collision course with the Norwegian Coastal Administration all the time since they took over the submarine case.
Read the press release from the government with the participants in the expert panel:
https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/ekspertutvalg-for-ubaten-u-864-er-klart/id2777474/
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