The agricultural inspector will submit a request to the Court for Misdemeanors to initiate misdemeanor proceedings against the Electric Power Company of Montenegro (EPCG) and the executive director of Thermal Power Plant Pljevlja, Vladimir Šestović, and propose that they be sentenced to the maximum penalties prescribed by the Law on Freshwater Fisheries and Aquaculture.
This was announced by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
The analysis of the Center for Ecotoxicological Testing (CETI) showed that the water samples, sampled from the Ćehotina and Vezišnica rivers, were outside of all the classes prescribed by the Regulation on Classification and Categorization of Surface and Groundwater.
As they said from the Ministry of Agriculture, after receiving the findings of CETI, the agricultural inspector will submit a request to the Misdemeanor Court in Bijelo Polje (Department in Pljevlja) to initiate misdemeanor proceedings against EPCG and proposes that the legal entity and responsible person V.Š. I blame the ads for the offenses committed and that the maximum penalties be imposed on them.
"By examining the water samples taken at different locations on the Ćehotina and Vezišnica rivers, CETI determined that the water samples were outside of all the classes prescribed by the Decree on the Classification and Categorization of Surface and Groundwater due to increased PH value, nitrite and orthophosphate content," the statement reads.
It is added that the analysis of fish samples carried out by the Specialist Veterinary Laboratory revealed hemorrhagic and necrotic changes and contents in the internal organs as well as on the gills, which points to the influence of some corrosive-caustic agent.
"Request for initiation of misdemeanor proceedings against the legal entity Elekroprivreda of Montenegro due to the fact that liquid waste from production and other materials that negatively affect the quality of fishing water were released from the production facility of the Pljevlja Thermal Power Plant through the return water valve into the Vezišnica River, a tributary of the Ćehotina River. caused the death of fish in the said waters, thereby causing violations in accordance with the Law on Freshwater Fisheries and Aquaculture," the announcement states.
It is stated that the competent inspector proposed in the request for the initiation of misdemeanor proceedings that after presenting the evidence, the legal entity EPCG and the responsible entity V.Š. I blame the ads for the offenses committed and that they be sentenced to the maximum penalties prescribed by the Law on Freshwater Fisheries and Aquaculture.
This is especially so because we are talking about the pollution of the rivers Vezišnica and Ćehotina and the ecosystems connected with them, on a huge scale and mass destruction of fish and other aquatic organisms.
"According to the assessment of the competent inspector, the purpose of punishment can only be achieved by imposing the maximum penalty, since this is about the destruction of goods of general interest," the statement said.
They announced that the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, based on the Law on Freshwater Fisheries and Aquaculture and the Rulebook on the Price List for Compensation for Damage to Fish and Other Aquatic Organisms, will quickly form a commission consisting of a representative of the Ministry and officially appointed representatives of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and SRK Lipjan, which manages those waters.
"The commission will go to the scene, draw up a record of the situation and review the available documentation of the competent inspections, from which the extent and amount of damage to fish and other aquatic organisms can be determined," the statement said.
After considering all available data and documentation, the Commission will determine the amount of compensation for damage to fish and other aquatic organisms, as well as make a finding and opinion on the amount of damage caused. The documentation will be submitted to the Ministry of Agriculture and Sport Fishing Club Lipjen, from Pljevlje, for further processing.
In the coming days, researchers from the Faculty of Natural Sciences will, in accordance with the usual procedure and methodology, conduct trial sampling on the Ćehotina River and its tributaries with the aim of preliminary determination of the state of the fish fauna, assessment of the state of the benthic communities, so that based on this, a preliminary assessment of the state of the not only the fish fauna but also the entire ecosystem of the river Ćehotina in the part of the stream that was affected by this accident.
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