Dejan Furtula he sighed in despair as he watched construction machinery working day and night to remove tons of waste polluting the Drina River near his hometown of Višegrad, in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina.
This environmental activist is frustrated because the problem is not new. Every winter, the garbage that swollen rivers bring from the region piles up downstream, eventually piling up at the barriers erected by the hydroelectric power plant in Visegrad, writes the Associated Press.
“This is a clear example of the lack of political will and inaction of all relevant institutions,” said Furtula, who heads the environmental group Eco Center. “They meet year after year and make promises, but, as we see, these scenes are constantly repeated,” he told the AP.
The scenes are reminiscent of scenes from environmental disaster movies - the otherwise emerald green surface of the river is densely covered with plastic bottles, pieces of wood or furniture, rusty barrels, household appliances, and even dead animals. Furtula says there is also medical waste.
“This is an ecological disaster,” he said. “The Drina is rich in fish and you can imagine the toxins that are being released here - there is literally everything, it is a major disaster.”
The waste originates from illegal dumps upstream in Bosnia, but also in neighboring Serbia and Montenegro. Numerous smaller tributaries across the region flow into the Drina, each carrying its share of the trash, the AP points out.
In the summer, the rivers are popular with rafters and nature lovers. The garbage problem peaks during the winter months, when swollen rivers wash away illegal dumps along their banks.
Officials from the three countries have promised to work together to resolve the problem. One such meeting of the environmental ministers of Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro was held at the site in 2019, but years later, no solution is in sight.
The situation shows how the region, decades after the devastating wars of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, still lags behind the rest of Europe, both economically and when it comes to environmental protection.
In addition to river pollution, many Western Balkan countries face other environmental problems. One of the most pressing is the extremely high levels of air pollution affecting many cities in the region.
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro are all aspiring to join the European Union. Addressing environmental issues is one of the key conditions for joining the 27-nation bloc.
Furtula says there are multiple options for solving the garbage problem, including mapping illegal dumps and installing cameras and barriers in multiple municipalities, rather than allowing all the waste to end up in Višegrad.
Once pulled from the river, the trash ends up in a local landfill, where it burns slowly and releases toxic particles into the air, in what Furtula described as his city's "vicious cycle" of pollution.
“It comes from three countries - Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia,” he said. “But no one wants to admit that it’s theirs.”
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