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In Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the Drina River, the removal of waste has begun that endangered the work of the “Visegrad” Hydroelectric Power Plant, and threatens to lead to an ecological catastrophe. The assumption is that the cleanup could take up to a month and the waste also jeopardized electricity production.
The images of the rubbish-laden Lake Drina ecological catastrophe shocked the public across the region, but not the citizens of Visegrad, who for years had known about the problem emerging in neighboring countries. The escalation occurred these days because the pinion broke, so that about 4,000 cubic meters of waste reached the dam itself.
“It mainly comes from Lima, because there are all the illegal sanitary landfills on the banks of that river and everyone knows it well, and those authorities are up there.” It is not just about Priboj, both below Priboj and Montenegro, and everyone is transferring it from one to another until it reaches Visegrad and creates a problem, “says Aleksandar Antić, a citizen of Visegrad.
Although they have warned for years about the alarming situation from the leadership of HPP Visegrad, but also from citizens and nature lovers and activists from rare environmental associations, nothing significant has ever been done to solve this catastrophe. The HPP Višegrad garbage collection teams are on the ground and it is obvious that this process will take at least a month to clean the surface of the water. Today about 100 cubic meters have been cleaned and it is assumed that there are about 4,000 cubic meters left after the pinion broke.
“All the garbage that arrives here is literally removed and thrown into the Visegrad landfill. And it burns and everything washes away and returns to Drina through the groundwater. The Visegrad hydroelectric power station has an extraction equipment, but I don’t know what its capabilities are, ”says eco-activist Eco Visegrad Dejan Furtula.
In Bajina Basta, at a meeting attended by HPP Visegrad director Nedeljko Perisic, it was agreed to help Elektroprivreda Srbije remove rubbish near the dam in Visegrad. Director Perišić confirmed to us that this is an interstate issue and that the relevant ministries are working on mapping the illegal dumps, although they are visible to the naked eye, and this is a plan that was agreed upon at a trilateral meeting a year ago.
“To single out an individual, an institution, or a city, I don’t think we’re going to get anything out of that right now. It is necessary to map all the illegal landfills upstream along the Drina River and its tributaries, and that is the task of all the ministries in the three countries where these wastes come from, and the fact is that they mostly come from the Lim River. “said HPP Visegrad director Nedeljko Perisic.
While the authorities are mapping the illegal dumps this garbage could eventually come from, the citizens of Visegrad and environmental activists know very well that 90 percent of this garbage comes from Serbia, through Lim, enters Drina and ends in the Visegrad area. Due to the slow reactions, everyone is skeptical that this problem will ever be solved.
