UKMERGĖ, Lithuania — An investigation is underway into the rerouting of a river near Ukmergė after a landowner who couldn’t build his house near the waterway decided to change the path of the water rather than the location of his planned building.

Algirdas Augūnas was informed that he could not build anything close to the Siesarties river due to town planning laws, but was so insistent on the location that he dug an 11 meter wide, 340 meter long trench with a three-meter deep bed, whilst damming the river near his house to create a dry patch of land.

Environmentalists say that Augūnas has caused untold amounts of damage to the surrounding area.

Zita Dudutytė, an environmental protection expert from the NGO Baltic Environmental Forum told Baltic Reports that the rerouting of the river is unprecedented and hopes it won’t be repeated.

“If everyone wanted to change the flow of the river to suit their backyards, what would happen? It’s not ethical on one hand and on the other hand he has moved a large amount of top-level soil so he has destroyed this natural situation,” Dudutytė said.

Since Augūnas made the new canal, the dam, which was built of stones and mud, burst during a storm on the original river section creating an island.

“Making this dam, this will make a swamp – he has definitely damaged all the local surroundings and all its natural inhabitants,” Dudutytė said.

Kayakers who noticed the change in the river first discovered the change in the river when they encountered islands in the river.

On further investigation, it was revealed that the river lay of land owned by Augūnas.

The redirecting of the river was no small task — 11,000 cubic meters of land were cleared along with a grove of trees and more than 10,000 square meters of top soil.

Ukmergė District Prosecutor Šarūnas Šimonis told Lietuvos Rytas that environmentalists had explained the nature of the damage, estimated to exceed 600,000 litas (€174,000).