Reader’s opinion|It is not easy to detect the ecological changes taking place below the surface.
Helsinki the nearby marine nature is destroyed project by project, sometimes in small steps, sometimes in larger ones. Some projects are fiercely opposed and individual battles can even be won, but in the long run the war for nature is likely to be lost. When a project that damaged the marine environment has been left behind, completed or left unimplemented, it will soon be forgotten when new ones come up again.
Humallahde’s banana bridge is a small project in the big picture. However, it falls on a beautiful and well-maintained sea bay, the symbol of which is a handsome cliff. The rock is not damaged, but the whole milieu is in danger: the rock, reed beds, coastal grove, cultural landscape and underwater nature.
Support to stop for a moment and think about what has happened to Helsinki’s beaches and the sea in front of them during the last hundred years. And then to assess what kind of change will be in the next hundred years, if the current trend continues.
In the inner archipelago, major current projects that threaten marine life include, for example, the sea filling of Koivusaari and the new residential area of thousands of people on the northern shore of Lauttasaari, or as an “alternative” a new neighborhood of a similar size to Salmisaari, which is also based on sea filling.
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Every project of destruction must be resisted.
To the east of the city center, large marine nature destruction projects include sea filling in Hakaniemi, Kalasatama, Sompasaari, Nihdi, Verkkosaari, Arabianranta, Kruunuvuorenranta and perhaps elsewhere on the shores of Laajasalo and Kruunusillat (especially during construction).
General the operating model is to claim that since the original natural beach of the place has already been destroyed by sea filling, they can be continued further without worry by promising to make the new beaches more pleasant. This is how it works in Koivusaari, for example. Here, the underwater ecological landscape is completely forgotten. The fillings planned in Koivusaari threaten the water flows in the surrounding straits and, among other things, the breeding areas of herons and destroy the new reed beds and their ecosystems created as a result of eutrophication.
On the outer archipelago, the situation is not as bad: the filling of Jätkäsaari and Hernesaari beaches is being completed. In Jätkäsaari and Ruoholahti, however, we have to watch out for projects that are still only trying to narrow the strait leading to Seurasaarenselki.
Own its numbers are residential projects proposed by visionaries for the islands off Helsinki. One of the hottest topics in the 2016 general plan was the extension of the Kruunusilto trolley route as an “island trolley” through Vartiosaari to the Vuosaari metro station. The connection from the southern tip of Lauttasaari to Melkki was already haunted when the general plan was drawn up in 2002. In 2016, the general plan proposal presented Melki’s more robust treatment.
On earth, the nature lovers have energetic watchdogs. On the sea side, big ecological changes take place below the surface and often gradually. That’s why it’s not easy to even notice them, let alone get excited to oppose them. However, the only possible course of action to stop the development is to oppose every project of destruction, big and small – especially in the inner archipelago.
Veikko Rinne
nonfiction writer
Helsinki
The reader’s opinions are speeches written by HS readers, which are selected and delivered by the HS editors. You can leave an opinion piece or familiarize yourself with the principles of the pieces at www.hs.fi/kiryotamielipidekeisuis/.
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