Environmental agony in country's southwest: They don't have landfill, so they throw whatever into Lim River

For the residents of Priboj, who live in the Lim River basin, the new rainfall that hit not only Serbia, but also Montenegro upstream has caused enormous problems. About 15,000 cubic meters of discarded garbage is floating down this river.

"A huge amount of garbage comes to us from Bijelo Polje (in Montenegro), where there are large car scrap yards right on the bank, and the garbage they don't sell is thrown into the river.  Additionally, when it swells up, the river brings all kinds of things because there are a lot of illegal garbage dump sites on the banks," Sinisa Laković from UG Jastreb, who works on garbage removal from the Lim in Serbia, told the RINA agency.

According to experts, this agony faced by residents of Priboj in southwestern Serbia will continue for some time, because it will take more than ten days to remove waste from the River Lim, unless new rainfall brings even more garbage.

"We started a garbage cleaning operation near the Potpec Dam, we are currently removing the garbage that we pulled out of the riverbed to the shore last time, from where we are transporting it to the Duboko Regional Landfill. They return wood to us, that we give to the biomass heating plant in Priboj, which heats half the town. The EPS, which sent trucks for extraction, as well as the relevant ministry, joined this campaign," Lakovic stressed.

A Telegraf.rs portal team went to a location almost 300 kilometers long in one direction to learn abizt the conditions at the Potpec Lake. Here's what we found there.

(Telegraf.rs)