In the last few months, Tivat has seen several major and minor incidents with oil liquid spills, solid waste, and construction waste, while the area of the Tivat field sees a growing number of dumps for soil and construction waste.
It is particularly critical at the Kotor crossroad on the Adriatic highway towards Solila, along with the local road Tivat - Radovići, where thousands of squares meters of land where macchia once grew turned into landfills for depositing soil excavations from numerous sites, not only in Tivat. There is often the deposits of construction waste, and in these areas, you can see dump trucks on a daily basis, carrying and discharging thousands of cubic meters of soil or waste, and excavators that align and compress this material.
The Inspection Department of the Municipality Tivat visits this road section almost every day.
“There was the deposit of construction waste at the mentioned location, but only from soil excavations. Soil as such, according to the Law on waste management, is not a waste, and its disposal on private parcels is allowed since the depositing is done mainly for preparatory works of terrain cleaning, levelling and the like," said the Utility Inspectorate, noting that the parcel where the disposal of this material is carried out is under private ownership.
However, even though inspectors claim that they did not find the disposal of construction waste, photos taken show that besides soil, there is also this kind of waste here - pieces of concrete and asphalt, plastic parts of pipes, nylon and other debris that soon becomes buried with the soil.
Several citizens suspect that some of the hazardous waste from the construction site of the Transformer station in Grbalj were disposed here during the night, but these allegations could not be reliably checked.
It is interesting, however, that in the territory of the smallest municipality in Boka Bay, there are currently over 80 active sites for various facilities. In its spatial planning documentation, the Municipality of Tivat does not have an official designated territory or site for the disposal of land excavations and construction waste, but those who create this waste are obliged to remove it by themselves following the law.
It is even worse at sea where Tivat, which in the media and statements by the government officials is represented as the "Montenegrin Monte Carlo", is predominant among all coastal municipalities in the number and frequency of ecological incidents.
Only in the past few months, citizens and the media have recorded nearly ten of such cases - from mud spills and polluted water from construction sites to the sea, over many instances of oil spills and oily liquids, fecal, fat and even vast amounts of solid waste, plastic bottles, canisters, styrofoam and other things that covered the waterfront in front of the town's promenade Pine and part of Porto Montenegro.
Part of this pollution comes from vessels, but a much more significant number of incidents occur concerning the materials coming to the seawater from the land, most often through the atmospheric sewage channels.
However, the Municipality of Tivat state that they are "not familiar with this statistic", which in practice can be seen by every inhabitant of this town.
"The Tivat municipality strictly condemns any form of pollution of the sea and negligent relations toward the environment. The Inspection Department of the Municipality of Tivat goes to the terrain, upon the application by the citizens, and reacts per the law and within their authorization, to prevent pollution of the sea from the land. The Inspection Department has recently punished a certain company after it has been determined that construction works executed by this entity resulted in pollution of the sea," said the local government.
Asked why the utility services of the town, which is considered to be the center of elite nautical tourism, does not have any basic equipment to intervene in the case of such incidents, the Municipality said that "when it comes to pouring oil, oily liquids, faeces, soil, mud or solid waste in the sea, according to the Law on Sea Activities, the protection of the sea is under the responsibility of the Port Authority".
The departments in the Tivat Municipality are therefore not in the position to own vessels and other technical means for purposes of solving these issues," the Municipality claims, whose utilities workers did not have tools to pick up a dozen kilos of communal waste fifteen days ago, which caused numerous tourists and locals to be appalled by the floating waste in the sea below Pine and Porto Montenegro.
Text by Sinisa Lukovic, on May 3rd, 2018, read more at Vijesti
