Weeks ago, I essayed a piece on the Tesla plant going up in the area just SE of Berlin (maybe a 40-minute drive from the city)....in the village of Grünheide. I noted the one key item from the selection and Tesla motivation....they didn't want this plant to be hindered by opposition or stall-tactics.
Well....if you go over and read the piece at RBB24....there's stall-tactics being applied.
The forest area (owned by the state) which was to have trees brought down, and the base of the plant to be constructed (with this construction to start by late summer)....has been halted by the court system.
Apparently, the High Administrative Court (OVG) of Berlin-Brandenburg stepped into the mess. They say that an environmental group has lodged a complaint, and that NO construction work or tree-cutting can go on.....until this hearing occurs and a court decision is made.
The size of this forest area? Well....roughly 225 acres. It's a fairly big chunk of land, but Tesla isn't exactly making toothbrushes.
The two key issues that the environmental guys are pursuing? Water usage in the local area is one of them. They are suggesting that Tesla might drain the water supply. It's an odd complaint because you could apply this logic to Mainz, or Frankfurt, or Stuttgart....as each new business or industrial action occurs. The second complaint is that no one has studied the introduction of massive human presence in this area to the plants and animals. To make this stick....you'd have to go and spend several years in some study.
So what'll happen here? If the court lingers on this, and stalls it for a fair amount of time (my guess is 90 days)......Tesla will say enough, and ask Poland or Czech if they'd like a production facility. The Czechs, I think....would go way beyond the German contributions and easily get the property and some start-up capital.
A destructive pursuit by the environmentalists? It would basically prove the point that you can't do much because of the German legal system (even as a German company), and it's better to move production out of the country.
The dates to watch here....around 18 March, a public hearing will be offered up and government folks will have a chance to hear complaints. No one says when the court might finalize their commentary, but you'd have to suspect it'd be by the end of April. If they go for more studies? I'd suggest within 30 days that Tesla shuts down the project and moves on.
Pretty amusing....all the negativity in eastern Germany about jobs wages and lack of new companies. Then here a bright spot opens up, and the system screws it enough to potentially cancel it out.
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