Final Rail Baltic section receives approval

TALLINN – The Estonian Consumer Protection and Technical Regulatory Authority (TTJA) has approved the environmental impact assessment (EIA) report for the construction project of the Rail Baltic Pärnu–Kabli section.

This was the final section of the main route in Estonia for which the environmental impact assessment awaited final approval, Rail Baltic Estonia announced.

When the environmental impact assessments for Rail Baltic began in 2012, it was believed that the entire route's environmental impact could be evaluated in a single strategic procedure. The reality proved to be much more complex, and concurrently, the understanding of the level of detail required for assessing the impact of such a massive infrastructure project grew. Ultimately, the entire main route was analyzed on a project-by-project basis.

The sheer volume of the environmental impact assessment is highlighted by its documentation. The assessment reports for the nine main route sections amount to 3,762 pages, excluding appendices. Furthermore, these appendices contain hundreds of environmental measures that must be taken into account during the railway's design and construction.

The environmental impact assessment process did not merely involve analyzing the impact on nature; it also directly altered the railway's design. For instance, ensuring animal passage determines the height of the railway in several locations, and when crossing rivers, it dictates the length of bridges to allow animals space to move along the banks. These environmental measures directly influence the railway's cost, technical solutions, and construction.

Designing the route required consideration of various natural assets, from wetlands and rivers to Natura 2000 sites and strictly protected species. In many areas, design solutions were modified, facility locations were refined, and entirely new mitigation and compensation measures were developed.

The most challenging section proved to be the nearly 45-kilometer-long Pärnu–Kabli stretch. Before the environmental impact assessment could begin for this section, the final location of the route corridor had to be determined through an updated spatial plan. This planning process also required an assessment of the impact on the capercaillie habitats in the Luitemaa nature reserve.

"With the capercaillie, experts quickly concluded that the impact couldn't simply be mitigated—it had to be compensated," said Kärt Mae, Head of Sustainability at Rail Baltic Estonia. "This meant we had to work with experts, the Environmental Board, and the State Forest Management Centre (RMK) to develop a compensation plan and identify areas where capercaillie habitats could be restored. When clear-cutting occurred in some of these areas in the interim, a portion of our work essentially had to be redone."

According to Mae, the greatest challenges were not individual species but situations where solving one problem created another. "A prime example is the fencing of the railway. For a high-speed line, this is necessary to prevent animal fatalities. At the same time, the fence turns the railway into a much larger barrier for wildlife, necessitating the construction of passages either under or over the tracks. The most complex part of the environmental impact assessment is finding a balance between these conflicting objectives," she noted.

Mae stated that the most crucial lesson from the entire process was that environmental impact assessments should provide designers with clear environmental conditions, enabling them to find the best technical solution within those parameters.

"In the initial EIA processes, experts often prescribed the current project design as an environmental measure rather than defining a substantive requirement, deeming that specific design suitable without specifying its most critical criteria," Mae explained. "As a result, when changes became necessary during further design, we had to go back to the experts to clarify the actual objective of the measure."

"The more experience we gained, the clearer it became that the role of an environmental impact assessment is not to dictate with meter-by-meter precision where to build something, but rather to establish environmental requirements that allow the designer to select the most sensible solution," she added. "Otherwise, a great deal of time is spent on solutions that are environmentally equivalent, and in a worst-case scenario, a better environmental solution might appear to be non-compliant with a specific EIA measure. This was one of the most significant lessons of the entire process."

The approval of the environmental impact assessment report opens the way for construction to begin on the railway section from Pärnu to Kabli. Estonia aims to be ready to open the line for traffic in 2030.