Postponing the heating of Pljevlja for a year is irresponsible and unacceptable to the people of Pljevlja, who met this heating season with excesses of polluting substances in the air.
This is the opinion of the president of the Ecological Society "Breznica" MIlorad Mitrović, who says that the authorities start talking about the ecological situation in Pljevlja only when the excess of polluting substances in the air is measured.
The heating season in Pljevlja has already started with the first colder days, and in the previous days the instruments of the Environmental Protection Agency measured hourly PM 10 particle exceedances up to four times higher than the allowed daily concentrations. Considerable excesses of the concentration of sulfur dioxide in the air were also observed.
"I am appalled by the attitude of the previous authorities. They all promised to do something, but no one did anything concrete. See sulfur dioxide exceedances. Nobody turns their heads, let alone does something to improve the situation," Mitrović told "Vijesta".
He states that he does not expect anything in this matter from the new government either, because the previous ones treated Pljevlje in the same way.
Prime Minister Milojko Spajić recently, during a working visit to Pljevlja, said that the long-awaited heating of Pljevlja is postponed for a year.
"It was said that the heating of Pljevlja would be completed by the end of 2024, but in that case they would not be able to complete some additional works that are planned. These additional works further reduce gas emissions and further reduce pollution and increase the efficiency of the thermal power plant and the profitability of the power plant. So somewhere the decision was made to finish both reconstruction and heating by the end of 2025," said Spajić.
And the Minister of Urbanism, Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property, Janko Odović, said that the work of the 44th Government "as far as Pljevlja is concerned will be focused on ecology because we have catastrophic indicators of cancer incidence".
The director of the Center for Climate Change of the University of Donja Gorica, Ivana Vojinović, believes that the people of Pljevlja met this heating season with "the same ecological picture of atmospheric pollution as in all previous years".
And for her, delaying heating is not good news for either Pljevlja or Montenegro.
"According to the information I have, nothing has been done to improve the air in Pljevlja in the past year, and above all I think that a national strategy in the area of air quality management has not been adopted. We are entering the fourth year that we have not adopted a national strategy, and we have harsh criticism from the European Commission in the report, which states that no progress has been made in the area of air quality, and as number 1, it is apostrophized that Montenegro has not adopted a national strategy," Vojinović said in a guest appearance on TV Vijesti. .
The strategy, she points out, should establish a system framework for air quality management, and not, as before, to do it spontaneously.
Lidija Šćepanović from the Environmental Protection Agency said that the data from the measuring stations showed that in November there were hourly exceedances of PM particles in the air, but that these were not "some huge exceedances".
She pointed out that meteorological conditions have an exceptional influence on air quality, which worsens with the beginning of the heating season.
"In October, the air quality was at a solid level, we had only one day in Pljevlja where the average concentration of PM particles was exceeded. In October of last year, we had 18 days of overstaying in Pljevlja," Šćepanović said.
She pointed out that last year in Pljevlja there were 124 days with exceeding daily concentrations of powdery substances.
She also said that the enormous air pollution that was registered in Pljevlja at the beginning of this year can be repeated during this heating season.
"Short-term measures were implemented to a large extent and they led to the fact that in 2012 we had 217 exceedances, and in 2020 it would be from 100 to 120. This means that the short-term measures gave a certain result. But until the heating of Pljevlja and the ecological reconstruction of the Thermal Power Plant are fully realized, we cannot talk about improving air quality. And when the heating is done, we will see to what extent the air quality will improve, because the heating does not provide for the connection of all individual combustion plants", said Šćepanović and added that the use of coal as an energy source must be eliminated in the coming period.
She also said that efforts should be made to educate citizens on how they can contribute to reducing air pollution through the use of environmentally friendly speeches.
In October 2019, a decision was made that enabled the Municipality of Pljevlja to collect environmental compensation from the biggest polluters of the Coal Mine, Pljevlja Thermal Power Plant and the Suplja Stijena Lead and Zinc Mine.
"On that basis, the Municipality annually earns between two and three million, and these funds must be exclusively used for environmental protection. These are not small financial resources that have already had to be invested in environmental projects. We need to see if these funds were used for the intended purposes," said Vojinović, who was also the assistant to the minister of sustainable development and tourism, that is, the general director of the Directorate for the Environment in three mandates of the Government.
For several years, the municipality of Pljevlja has not been able to spend more than five million euros, which were collected on the basis of compensation from the biggest polluters, even though it has numerous environmental problems.
Mitrović: Free the citizens from paying for electricity
For Mitrović, delaying heating is "unbearable because he does not see a good intention to solve the problem of air pollution in a serious way." He called on the Government and Prime Minister Spajić, who himself breathed in the polluted Pljevlja air while growing up in Pljevlja, to exempt citizens from paying for electricity during the heating season, given that he postponed the heating of the city for a year.
"As far as the quality of the air in Pljevlje is concerned, we still have 120 days with excesses of harmful substances in the air, which is worrying. First we had when it comes to the Thermal Power Plant that it was approved for 20.000 hours to work without ecological reconstruction, and when it used up those hours, instead of closing down, they continued to produce electricity. Ecological reconstruction is delayed. We doubt what will happen in all this, because this has to be solved in a more serious way than now. Until then, exempt citizens from paying for electricity, so that many of them would heat their apartments with electricity instead of coal," said Mitrović and reminded that the Thermal Power Plant produces electricity worth over half a million euros per day.
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