A Balkan river known for its stunning natural beauty has turned into a giant floating rubbish heap amid inclement weather made worse by long-term mismanagement.
Tons of plastic bottles, rusting barrels, old tires, household appliances, driftwood and other rubbish have piled up behind a dam on Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Drina River, which meanders through forested hills.
Much of this garbage was dumped in poorly regulated landfills on rivers or directly into the waterways that flow through three Balkan countries, collecting behind the fences as it flows downstream.
The barrier that a Bosnian hydroelectric power plant has erected a few kilometers upstream from its dam near Visegrad, a town in eastern Bosnia that has been involuntarily turned into a landfill site, local environmental activists are lamenting.
Heavy rains and unseasonably warm weather over the past week have caused many waterways in Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro to overflow, flooding surrounding areas and forcing scores of people from their homes.
Dejan Furtula of environmental group Eko Centar Visegrad said “the huge influx of garbage” has not stopped despite torrential rains and lessening flooding.
The Drina River flows 346 kilometers from mountainous northwestern Montenegro through Serbia and Bosnia. Many of its tributaries are known for their emerald color and stunning scenery.
It is estimated that around 10,000 cubic meters of garbage have accumulated behind the Drina river garbage barrier in recent days, Furtula said.
The same amount has been drawn from the river in recent years.
“Enormous danger to the environment and health”
Waste disposal is not the end of the problem.
Garbage disposal takes up to six months on average. But it ends up in a local landfill in Visegrad, which Furtula says doesn’t even have the capacity to dispose of the city’s own garbage.
“The fires at the landfill are always burning,” he said, calling the conditions there “not only an enormous environmental and health hazard, but also a great embarrassment for all of us.”
Decades after the devastating wars of the 1990s that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Balkans are lagging behind the rest of Europe both economically and in environmental terms.
The countries have made little progress in establishing effective, environmentally sound waste management systems, despite vying for EU membership and adopting some of the bloc’s laws and regulations.
Illegal landfills litter hills and valleys across the region, while trash litters roads and plastic bags adorn trees.
In addition to river pollution, many Western Balkan countries have other environmental problems.
One of the most pressing is the extremely high levels of air pollution affecting a number of cities in the region.
“People need to wake up with such problems,” said Rados Brekalovic from Visegrad.