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‘We will die before the Drina is clean’: Bosnia villagers hope for a solution to polluted river

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Drina river was once famed for its emerald waters. Now, after two decades of mismanaged waste, it’s full of rubbish.

Twice a year, between 10,000 and 15,000 cubic metres of plastic bottles, rusty barrels, used tyres, household appliances and other waste is pulled from the river at a site near the town of Visegrad.

Locals are losing hope that they will ever see the river clean again.

The Drina River runs 346 kilometres from the mountains of north-western Montenegro through Serbia and Bosnia.

Decades after the devastating 1990s wars that accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia, the countries of the region have made little progress in building effective, environmentally sound waste disposal systems.

Despite adopting some of the EU’s laws and regulations, unauthorised waste dumps dot hills and valleys throughout the region, while rubbish litters roads and plastic bags hang from trees.

The rubbish flows downstream from Serbia and Montenegro as well as Bosnia and collects at a rubbish barrier installed by a hydroelectric plant a few kilometres upstream of Visegrad.

The enormous rubbish flotilla is emptied twice a year and takes around six months to fully clear.

The waste retrieved from this section of the Drina ends up at the municipal landfill. According to local environmental activists, the landfill site lacks capacity to handle even the city’s municipal waste, let alone that amassed in Serbia and Montenegro.

“We now realise that our landfill, where we have been dumping this garbage [from the river] for years, is at 90 per cent capacity,” says Dejan Furtula of the environmental group Eko Centar Visegrad.

“So the question now is what will happen if next year we again face the influx of between ten and 15 thousand

Read more on euronews.com