Straightening the Drina Text: Pavel Antonov Photographs: Ecoforum - Belgrade Getting rid of the blanket of garbage behind the Perucac dam has proved almost as difficult as unbending the famous Balkan river. When southern Slavs say someone is trying to “straighten the Drina,” they mean he is attempting the impossible, just as an Anglophone might say you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. It has been beyond human imagination that the Drina River’s meandering course through the steep mountains of Bosnia and Serbia and down into the Sava valley could ever be altered. The modern Drina may be dammed and polluted with waste, but it still flows in the same twisting bed. Rallying national and local authorities, businesses and the public from different countries and republics to clean up the Drina, however, might be more difficult than straightening it. While the Drina is still well curved, new colours can be spotted through its naturally green water: brown beer bottles, yellow olive oil cans, blue Pepsi bottles and red Coca-Cola cans. Boxes of various shapes and tones are also visible, mostly made of plastic but also glass and metal varieties. One destination for the floating waste is Lake Perucac, some 12 km upstream from the town of Bajina Basta. Standing 93 metres, the Perucac dam wall was the highest in the world when it was completed in 1966, according to Vasilije Pavicevic, the director of the Bajina Basta hydroelectric power plant. The lake behind the wall is 28 square kilometres in area and 50 km long. More than 60,000 cubic metres of waste collect and float in this basin, according to Dusan Milovanovic, the director of Tara National Park. Although created by and to serve the power plant, the lake is currently administered by the national park. The Drina seems to have fought its way through the rocks, gorges and canyons along its course. The river’s entire length from the nexus of Piva and Tara in Scepan Pole to the Sava River is 340 km. In places like Perucac and Zvornik it slows and widens to 100-200 metres, while in Tijesno (literally, “Narrow”) it queezes through a 15 metre channel. Disturbed ecosystem The creation of the artificial lake caused major environmental problems in the area, according to Vladimir Stamenic, director of a local pressure group Ecological Movement of Bajina Basta. Stamenic claimed that the lake has changed the acidity and temperature of the water and has disturbed the river’s ecosystem, leading to the extinction of fish species. The second most harmful pressure on the Drina is waste, said Stamenic. “None of the cities along the river organise waste collection — that is why they dump it in the lake,” he explained. The waste, mostly household in origin, is illegally dumped along the banks or straight into the river along the 60 km section above the lake to Visegrad. Larger cities dumping waste into the Drina include: Visegrad, Gorazde and Foca in Republica Srpska, one of the entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina; Pribole and Priboj in Serbia; and Berane in Montenegro. According to Milovanovic’s rough estimation, a few hundred thousand people who live in these cities dump solid waste into the river with no official controls. When the river is low the waste lies on the dry bottom and is not so conspicuous, said Milovanovic. The amount of waste is revealed whenever the water level rises or the wind starts blowing. During summer plastic and metal waste, styrofoam and other waste blanket the lake’s surface; sometimes the trash forms a big island in the middle of the lake, Milovanovic said. Although legally responsible for the lake’s management the national park lacks the means and personnel to clean up its surface, Milovanovic admitted. The local communal services company also rejects responsibility. “We want to see it cleaned up but we do not want to lose money from it either,” said the company’s manager Zoran Markovic. He clarified that his company sees no politics in the issue and is primarily interested in making a profit. The public utility company that Zoran Markovic manages is called “September 12.” It employs 135 workers and oversees collection and processing of waste over a 600 sq km area around the lake and the town. A legislative gap leaves the status of the company unclear. “We are neither a private, nor a public company,” explained the director. He added that a process is underway to turn the company into public property. It is also unclear who is supposed to control the dumping of waste into the river. To begin with, 15 km of the riverbank belongs to Bosnia, so there is no way for the park administration to interfere, the park’s director complained. But law enforcement is difficult and fines are insignificant in Serbia, as well. Snejana Jovanovic, inspector for environment in the Bajina Basta municipality, put it simply: “There are no registered polluters. There is nobody to chase.” The waste problem of the Drina and Lake Perucac is typical for the rest of the Balkans: municipalities face considerable problems in effective implementation of waste management policies, explained Jovan Pavlovic, a project manager at the Belgrade office of the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC). Apart from posing risks to the environment and human health, waste pollution also blights the surrounding landscape. In areas rich in natural beauty such as the Drina River basin, waste discourages tourism and recreation, hinders the socio-economic development of the area, and degrades the quality of life of local people, said Pavlovic. Coordinating the efforts of the different authorities, companies and administration across municipal and republican borders appears to be the most difficult task. A EUR 330,000 contribution from Norway’s government is making this possible during the period 2002-2006. The project is being implemented in three phases by the REC. In addition to the estimated 60,000 cubic meters of waste accumulated during the previous decade, annual solid waste accumulation in Lake Perucac was estimated at 4,000-6,000 cubic metres during the REC’s initial scoping. Of this, 40 percent was plastic, 40 percent wood and the rest was other materials such as rubber, metal and glass. These figures and other information collected during the project’s first phase served as a basis for several options to solve the problem. Local and national park authorities, NGOs, utility companies and other relevant institutions from Serbia and Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina met twice to discuss the technical, economic, environmental, social and instututional aspects of the problem. They agreed on a solution for collecting the waste from the lake and safely disposing it. With REC’s assistance the Tara National Park prepared an application for funding, and the Norwegian government agreed to supply funds for the purchase of necessary equipment. Grants from Norway worth nearly EUR 60,000 were used to purchase a waste-collection vessel to skim the waste off the lake, and a waste compactor to ease its deposition in the Bajna Basta landfill. The equipment beneficiaries, REC and the Bajna Basta municipality signed multy-party agreements in which the beneficiaries agreed to operate the equipment in line with the use agreed in the grant application. The waste collection programme is being implemented by the Tara National Park and the company September 12. In the winter when most of the waste is flowing down from Visegrad, the ship is used there, while during the summer it operates in the lake. The main goal is to use a modern technical method which speeds up the cleaning of the waste, Milovanovic said. In addition to the funds for equipment, further funds have been granted for manual waste collection and educational campaigns to be undertaken by NGOs in 2005-2006. The clean up is underway, but has not gone as smoothly as anticipated. Branches and leaves mixed up in the plastic got stuck in the collecting pocket of the vessel and prevented the waste from entering. Afterward, it was impossible to remove the branches from the waste container. “For the purpose of collection the ship was not an ideal solution,” Milovanovic commented. Sometimes the waste looks like a big island in the middle of the lake. The clean-up team immediately decided to alter the vessel. A wide scoop was placed on the boat that allowed it to push the waste closer to the dam instead of collecting it. After this modification, roughly 3,500 cubic metres of garbage were removed from the shore in April. It took 400 truckloads to transport the waste to the municipal landfill. Other problems ensued with the transport of the waste, the sorting of plastic and the eventual disposal. The costs of dumping the waste was higher than expected. The National Park paid for the fuel and lubricants to clean the floating waste but was not ready to take on further costs. “By pulling the waste to the river banks we think we finished our part of the job, and all the communal public services of Bajina Basta should be involved to further clear the waste,” said Milovanovic. But the communal company finds the cost of collecting waste along the banks of the river too high. “We own the disposal site and we work for profit, so we cannot take the extra cost for separating and recycling the waste,” Markovic stated. The ordeal highlighted that environmental clean-up in the Balkans is not strictly about money, observed Bajna Basta project director Jennifer McGuinn of the REC. “It showed that despite well prepared feasibility studies and open discussions between stakeholders, institutional problems caused by lack of clear competencies and frequent personnel changes hinder the implementation of solutions” she said. Cooperation established Though final clean-up of the Lake is far off, the most important thing was establishing cross-border cooperation aimed at solving the problem, said Pavlovic, who is in charge of REC work in Bajina Basta. He pointed to the REC’s unique model for facilitating a large and diverse group of stakeholders across borders based on a shared environmental problem, which could be applied to other sites in the Balkans. A committee for the Drava River was set up in June with representation form all the municipalities along the river. The REC’s work will continue in order to ensure that waste-cleaning activities bring concrete results, to maintain intense involvement of local communities and build their ownership of the process of cross-border cooperation. During the third phase of the Norweigian-funded project the committee will monitor the clean-up implementation. A platform for further dialogue on environmental improvement in the region will be established.

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