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From our special reporter
This year, due to the corona virus pandemic, domestic tourists occupied Serbian mountains and lakes. The same happens in the artificial lake Perućac and in the Tara mountain. Residents of the villages of Bajina Basta and Tar say that no one ever remembers such a large number of visitors. They are mostly in private accommodation because the hotel’s capacity is too small even when there is no emergency situation.
In recent years, thousands of buildings have sprung up in Mitrovica, Kaludjerski Bari and the shores of Lake Perućac, mostly illegal, from houses and villas to rafts ranging from a few square meters to several hundred square meters. The faeces from these facilities end up in a few septic tanks, and mostly in streams, lakes and the beauty of the Drina. There is a mockery at Lake Perućac, an incredible sight with rafts around which trash of all kinds floats and feces that end up directly under them in the Drina. Some were built and installed by the locals, and a host of various newcomers renting everything out to tourists for big bucks via websites. And all this within the “Tara” National Park, which has almost no authority to stop it and bring it to the order of civilization.
In October 2018, we wrote about when the state and local self-government demolished and removed all the shoreline and water facilities except four that were in some sort of legal dispute and were expected to be removed very soon. This was confirmed to us by the president of the municipality, Radomir Filipović, who also said that a detailed urban plan is being drawn up, which is still being adopted! Of the four then, more than one hundred and fifty illegal buildings have been reached today, because none of them has a construction permit from the “Tara” National Park, or the Bajina Basta municipality, or the competent ministries.
Rafts literally sprout every day in the lake. Instead of being proud of what nature has given us, as some of the visitors we spoke with tell us, this is a shame and a shame: “We will never return to this mockery and stench that spreads from the buildings” . Most visitors are disappointed in the ruin of the natural beauty and the danger of the flora and fauna. At the same confluence of the Derventa and the lake, there is a natural Drina fish hatchery, which is also threatened by illegal construction and summer homes in these facilities. This was confirmed to us by the director of the “Tara” National Park, Dragić Karaklić.
It seems that this problem only worries the National Park. The professional services, within their powers, write petitions and complaints to various institutions, and that’s it. The problem is the intertwining of the powers of the municipality, HPP “Bajina Basta”, the Serbian army and other institutions of the republic, so that arrogant people use it and abuse it from the beginning: everyone is competent and nobody is competent. The best image of all was given to us by a man who has been dealing with this problem for a long time and who begged us not to mention his name as he already has problems: he has earned enemies and threats from powerful locals.
He says for “Politika”: “Most of the true nature lovers are upset by the anarchy related to the construction of rafts on the lake.” It is even more difficult for us, the employees of the services who must protect the protected area from disturbances by the state. The problem at the lake began decades ago with the construction of the first illegal facility. After the marathon process, hundreds of mindless minutes and lost competitions (NP ‘Tara’, HPP ‘Bajina Basta’, Municipality BB, Vodoprivreda), most of the facilities were eliminated in 2018; the remaining four are still in process. “
Parallel to solving a problem, the following appeared: expansion of the raft placement (pontoon with houses).
“At the beginning we wrote acts on illegal installation because none of the arrogant ones have the necessary conditions of the Institute for the Protection of Nature, the permission of the municipality and the consent of the National Park. After illogical court rulings, inaction by the competent inspectors of the republic and the municipality, a general political climate, arrogant owners are installing more and more rafts and facilities are becoming more expensive. Behind the façade of nature lovers are fast money hunters: renting a raft costs between 60 and 150 euros per day. The current situation in the lake is: about 150 ponds from which the wastewater and wastewater with faeces were carried directly into the lake. There are not enough garbage containers on the shore, nor parking spaces, there is arbitrariness in the assembly of the facilities (choosing place, mooring method, approaching the shore (). Most of them pay fees for the occupation of the protected area (according to the Law on Fees), which are calculated by the expert service of the National Park ‘Tara’, but that does not legalize them, ”says Karaklić.
The legal obligation of the municipal administration is to organize the installation of rafts, which NP “Tara” reminded him in writing.
“The answer was: we are waiting for a plan for the detailed regulation of the lake; of course, the plan was not adopted two years ago, nor today, and when it will be, we do not know. Of course, no one in the municipal administration came up with preventing illegal construction until the regulations are approved. The tolerance of HPP ‘Bajina Bašta’ is also unusual, because in its regulations there is no place for floating objects near the dam. The explanations of the Border Police about the day and night stay of hundreds of people in the lake (border) are also confusing, and therefore fishermen are prohibited from staying in the water from dusk to dawn. It is simply incredible that none of the competent inspections (environmental, communal, water management …) recognized the authority to go out into the field to see the mockery in the water. And the lake shore is in the second buffer zone, and only the lake is in the third. The inaction of the institutions gave room to anarchy, favored the arrogant, the violent and the rude, legalized the ‘law of the fittest’ (especially in the fight for a better place, there were physical confrontations). We at NP ‘Tara’ are powerless in the face of that ”, says our interlocutor.
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