[ad_1]
In a report on the unresolved problem of wastewater treatment in Serbia, Agence France-Presse writes about the pollution of the Danube, the second longest river in Europe, and the unhindered discharge of wastewater into it.
Not far from the historic heart of Belgrade, fences are being opened to allow a tanker truck to go to the magnificent Danube river where it empties its cargo of sewage, writes the agency in an article titled “The Danube is not so blue in Serbia.”
The agency notes that this is not a secret operation, but something no one wants to talk about, noting that Belgrade is the only European capital to dump its unfiltered sewage into the continent’s second longest river.
The disgusting stench comes from the brown water filled with feces that is released into the river, which is light years from the blue that inspired Johann Strauss’s composition “On the beautiful blue Danube”, writes France Press.
Fishermen living on the Danube and Sava, which form a spectacular estuary near the old Belgrade fortress, call these daily spills “catastrophic”.
“I’m crying and the whole world really cares,” Dragoljubi Ristic, a 59-year-old fisherman, told AFP.
About a third of the 1.6 million inhabitants of the Serbian capital are not connected to the sewage system and depend on septic tanks whose contents are discharged directly into rivers, according to the agency, reports Beta.
But the dirty water of those who are connected to the sewer system also ends up in the same place through the sewage drainage, adds France Press. The agency claims that Serbian Infrastructure Minister Zorana Mihajlović estimates that 190 million cubic meters of wastewater, or 60,000 Olympic swimming pools, are dumped into Belgrade’s waterways each year.
France Press recalls that the source of the Danube is in Germany, which flows 2,850 kilometers east through nine other countries and empties into the Black Sea.
In 2019, Austrian scientists reported “critical” levels of the fecal bacteria Escherichia coli in the Serbian part of the Danube, which, according to local experts, is a sign of heavy organic contamination.
With its strength and size, the Danube manages to “self-purify” relatively well from organic waste. For most of the year, bacteriological particles do not reach a critical level of 500 micrograms per milliliter, said Bozo Dalmacija, a chemistry professor who conducts research on water quality in Serbia.
However, as France Press points out, those who spend their lives on the Danube say they have noticed deterioration, an accumulation of substances that reduces the depth of the water.
According to the fishermen, the species of fish has changed with the decrease of species considered noble and the increase of those that consume decomposing waste products such as catfish.
“We kill all our rivers, we will kill this one too. The Danube is a very strong river and a very strong one that handles (pollution), but it can’t do it indefinitely,” said Mladen Jović, a 59-year-old fisherman.
France Press points out that Serbia is a candidate to join the EU and that it hopes to join in 2025, and that its performance in the environmental field is an obstacle, that the country needs five billion euros of investment to build infrastructure that better respects nature .
[ad_2]
