Workers of the company “Hidroelektrane na Drini” should start removing floating waste tomorrow, which is located on the dam of Hidroelektrane “Visegrad”, and which got there by breaking the upper chain, which endangers the production of electricity, the company said.
The specialized team of the Hydroelectric Power Plant “Visegrad” annually removes from 6,000 to 8,000 cubic meters of floating waste from the Drina, including wood, plastic and other waste from landfills in the area.
The problem of floating waste has been present for many years and has been discussed at numerous meetings and gatherings held in Visegrad. A trilateral meeting of the ministries of the Republika Srpska, Serbia and Montenegro was held in Visegrad two years ago, on the problem of floating waste, but the problem has not been resolved to this day.
President of the Association for Sport Fishing and Ecology “Drina Lakes” in Visegrad, Aleksandar Kojic, says that the Drina is still considered one of the cleanest rivers, as evidenced by the rich fish stock and the presence of trout, which chooses only clean rivers, and appeals to floating waste should be resolved by the efforts of the three countries through which the Drina flows.
With the new year in Visegrad, the decades-long problem of floating waste has been activated. After the water level rose, in the previous days, one of the chains above the Visegrad Hydroelectric Power Plant burst, set up with the aim of stopping a huge amount of waste, RTRS writes.
By breaking the upper chain, about three to four thousand cubic meters of waste reached the dam of the Hydroelectric Power Plant Višegrad, which endangered the production of electricity.
”This is a decades-long problem of our company. As the last link in the chain, we are left to fight this problem on our own. Our predictions and findings are not optimistic. In the upper part of the Drina River, but also its tributaries, the situation is not good at all. According to our estimates, it is about tens of thousands of cubic meters of waste that we do not know how we will deal with all this on our own,” says Nedeljko Perisic, director of the HPP on the Drina.
Unofficially, RTRS learns that the situation is no better at the Potpec dam near Priboj, where due to the release of the dam, all waste would reach the Visegrad River.
”We have a case and it remains for us to solve this with our own forces and the forces of the companies we will hire, and we hope to have the help of our institutions and countries from which this floating waste comes,” adds Perisic. During the day, with great effort, the workers of HPP Višegrad managed to repair the sprocket and stop the flow of waste.”
Annually, the specialized team of HPP Visegrad removes from six to eight thousand cubic meters of floating waste from the Drina River. It is high time that all competent institutions get involved in solving this problem, which threatens to cause an ecological catastrophe.
