A joke near the airport: Morsko dobro completely abandoned the water terminal built in 2022

Although the peak summer season is in full swing, and this year, unlike previous years, the facility is still being used by a number of tourists, the temporary so-called Tivat Airport Water Terminal, which was built in the summer of 2022 at the Blato location near the threshold of runway 14 of Tivat Airport by the JP Morsko dobro from Budva, is in an extremely inadequate condition.

This facility was damaged in a storm last fall and was partially repaired, but vandals destroyed some of its contents again a few months ago. Although it was notified in time and the media reported on it on several occasions, the JP Morsko dobro, which officially manages this temporary facility, has not made any effort to repair and restore it.

This is also shown by the photographs taken yesterday by a journalist from "Vijesti" at the Water Terminal, where the wet area is completely destroyed, with destroyed toilets and torn off doors, next to which tourists are sitting on benches waiting for a boat or road transfer to the Tivat Airport terminal building, which is about a kilometer away. Tourists and passengers who use the Water Terminal have nowhere to shelter from the rain and sun because the canopies that were once here have been removed, nor to ask anyone for information because the Maritime Administration has also removed the kiosk-ticket office-guard that once existed here. There are no trash cans, the surrounding greenery has dried up or been destroyed, and all the public lighting poles along the Water Terminal pier are broken.

Yesterday, the Public Company Morsko dobro, headed by director Mladen Mikijelj, did not answer questions from "Vijesti" about why the state-owned company that built, equipped and manages this temporary facility allowed it to enter the peak summer season in such an inappropriate and devastated condition.

They did not say whether or when Morsko dobro will renovate this facility, since a certain amount of passenger traffic is still taking place through it this summer.

"Does the attitude of the JP Morsko dobro towards the temporary facility of the Tivat Airport Water Terminal, from which Morsko dobro does not and cannot have direct commercial profit, confirm that this JP completely neglects its role in preserving and implementing the public interest in coastal management activities in the Tivat area? If not, why is Morsko dobro so irresponsibly treating the facility that your company's management praised in public two years ago as alleged proof of Morsko dobro's success and its meeting the public's needs for more efficient transfers to and from Tivat Airport," are questions to which we also did not receive an answer from the company headed by Mladen Mikijelj.

The Maritime Department spent over 2022 euros on the construction and equipping of the Tivat Airport Water Terminal, ahead of the peak summer season of 30.000, beyond its own JPMD Funds Use Plan for that year.

Acting on the basis of the Government's conclusion from May of that year, the Maritime Administration built a temporary Water Terminal facility at the Blato location, just a few dozen meters from the threshold of runway 14 of Tivat Airport, but outside the fence of the airport complex, in order to allegedly reduce the problems that passengers from Tivat Airport have during road transfers from that airport to their final destinations, due to the catastrophically congested Adriatic Highway through Tivat in the summer.

The facility was built in violation of the then-current official Program of Temporary Facilities in the Coastal Zone for the period 2019-2023, as well as without obtaining urban and technical conditions from the Secretariat for Spatial Planning of the Municipality of Tivat, or from the relevant Ministry of Ecology, Spatial Planning and Urbanism, given that the location is within the scope of the current State Study of the "Tivat Airport" location.

In addition, this facility was built without a foothold in the then valid JPMD Fund Utilization Plan for 2022. Despite all this, JPMD ultimately concreted the plateau leading there from the previously constructed concrete pier at the Blato location, built a ticket office and a small sanitary facility, as well as arranged and paved a large plateau for parking vehicles, installed electrical infrastructure, lighting, and horticulturally arranged the entire area by planting various plants and trees.

All of this was done without obtaining formal approval from the Civil Aviation Agency of Montenegro, even though the temporary Water Terminal facility is located in a very sensitive area for flight safety at Tivat Airport, namely the approach planes for landing on runway 14, or the departure planes for taking off from runway 32, and some of its parts "break through" the maximum heights of objects that are even temporarily allowed to be located there.

30.000 euros were spent by Morsko good for the construction and equipment of the Water Terminal of Tivat Airport.

To complete the absurdity and irony of what JPMD did last year at the Blato location, the temporary Water Terminal facility was built in the so-called jet blast, i.e. a zone dangerous for people and vehicles due to the impact of jet engine exhaust from airplanes taking off from runway 14, as clearly indicated by the warning sign that JP Morsko Dobro suddenly removed, after the media wrote that the so-called terminal facility was built in a dangerous zone.

Unlike the previous two seasons when this facility was almost always “swooning empty” and there was very little interest from air passengers to use it to arrive at the airport or depart from the Tivat airport, the situation is somewhat different this summer, primarily due to the fact that the Water Terminal in Kukuljina is connected to the city by a regular boat line maintained by the Ecoboats company, which connects Tivat with several destinations within the Boka Bay using electrically powered boats. Ecoboats boats have 11 daily departures from the Water Terminal to the city and vice versa, and there is also a mini-bus connection from the airport terminal building to the Kukuljina terminal and vice versa.