The municipality of Tivat distances itself from the increasingly frequent environmental incidents and activities that lead to the devastation of nature on land and sea.
In the past month or two, there have been several major or minor incidents in Tivat with the spilling of oil-oily liquids, solid waste, construction waste, soil and mud into the sea, while more and more landfills of soil and construction waste are springing up in the Tivat field.
The situation is particularly critical on the stretch from the Kotor intersection on the Adriatic highway towards Solili, along the local road Tivat - Radovići, where thousands of square meters of land where maquis once grew have been turned into plots for depositing earthen excavations from numerous, not only Tivat, construction sites. Not infrequently, rubble is also deposited there. In those places, you can see dump trucks every day that bring and unload thousands of cubic meters of soil or rubble, and excavators that level and compact that material.
The Tivat Municipality Inspection Service told "Vijesta" that they visit this section almost every day.
"At the mentioned location, there was no dumping of construction rubble, but only dumping of earth excavations. Soil as such, according to the Law on Waste Management, does not constitute waste, and its deposition on private plots is allowed, since its deposition is mainly carried out for the purpose of preparatory work on cleaning the terrain, leveling the terrain and the like", say the Municipal Inspection, noting that is a privately owned plot of land where this material is disposed of.
However, although the inspectors claim that they did not find any dumping of construction debris, the photos taken by "Vijesti" clearly show that, in addition to soil, this type of waste is also brought here - pieces of concrete and asphalt, plastic parts of pipes, nylon and other waste that soon it gets buried in the ground.
Several citizens who suspect that even certain hazardous waste from the construction site of a large transformer station in Grblje was dumped here under the cover of night, but it was not possible to reliably verify these allegations.
It is interesting, however, that although over 80 construction sites of various facilities are currently active on the territory of the municipality of Bokelje, the municipality of Tivat in its spatial planning documentation does not have an officially designated territory or location for the disposal of excavations and construction waste, but those who create this waste are obliged to ensure that it is removed in accordance with the law.
The situation is even worse at sea, where Tivat, which in the media and in the statements of government officials is considered the "Montenegrin Monte Carlo", leads among all coastal municipalities in terms of the number and frequency of environmental incidents.
In the past few months alone, citizens and the media have recorded almost ten such cases - from the spilling of mud and cloudy water from the construction site into the sea, through several cases of spilling of oil and oily liquids, feces, grease, even huge amounts of solid waste, plastic bottles, canisters, styrofoam and other things that covered the water area in front of the city waterfront of Pine and part of Porto Montenegro.
Part of that pollution comes from vessels, but a much larger number of incidents occur in connection with substances that reach the sea from land, most often through atmospheric sewage channels.
From the Municipality of Tivat, however, they state that they "are not familiar with these statistics" that every resident of the city sees in practice.
"The Municipality of Tivat strongly condemns every form of sea pollution and careless attitude towards the environment. The inspection service of the Municipality of Tivat went to the field several times upon citizen's report and reacted in accordance with the law and within the framework of its powers, in order to prevent sea pollution by spilling from the land. The Service for Inspection Affairs recently fined a certain legal entity after it was determined that the execution of construction works by this entity resulted in sea pollution," the local self-government told "Vijesta".
Municipal services do not even have basic equipment
When asked why the municipal services of the city, which is considered the center of elite nautical tourism in the country, do not even have the basic equipment to be able to intervene in the event of such incidents, the Municipality says that "when it comes to the spilling of oil, oily liquids, feces, soil, sludge, or solid waste into the sea, in accordance with the Law on Maritime Assets, the protection of marine assets is the responsibility of the Port Authority". "Therefore, the authorities of the Municipality of Tivat do not need to own vessels and other technical means for these purposes", claim the Municipality, whose communal workers about fifteen days ago did not have anything to pick up several tens of kilograms of municipal waste, which, to the dismay of tourists and locals, was floating in the sea below Pina and Porto Montenegro.
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