At the 38th kilometer of the Smokovac-Mateševo highway section, Chinese company is carrying out works to excavate two tunnels that will connect Mateševo loop with the rest of the highway towards Podgorica.
The works are carried out in the immediate vicinity of the Jabuka stream that flows into the Tara River, near which are installed pipes for drainage of waste water from the construction sites caused by the washing of concrete mixers at that location.
However, footage made by the MANS Investigative Centre show that CRBC discharges waste water directly into the stream and thus untreated into the Tara River.
MANS, which has been intensively following for the last couple of weeks everything that is happening on the highway route that is being built along the Tara River, warns that it is not about an isolated incident.
“Every time we went out on the field we had the same situation. The wastewater from the Mateševo tunnel is flowing through the Jabučki stream directly into Tara, without any filters and without any purifiers. This leads to the conclusion that this is not an isolated incident, but a continuous discharge of wastewater directly into Tara,” says Dejan Milovac from MANS.
The fact that the competent state institutions knew that Tara was contaminated with waste water from the construction sites is confirmed by the official findings of the Institute for Public Health and the Institute of Hydrometeorology and Seismology.
Namely, during this and last year, the testing of water quality in this part of the construction site of the highway showed that in as many as 26 cases, the water sample was defective.
In addition to Jabuka stream, the tests were carried out at other locations as well, and some of them showed that there is a problem with the treatment of wastewater through the installed purification collectors.
The Environmental Impact Assessment Study has obliged the Ministry of Transport as an investor and CRBC as a contractor to conduct quarterly testing of quality of the water that comes into contact with the construction of the highway.
The same document listed the obligation to all institutions that are in the possession of the Report on the measurements to share this information with the public, which did not happen. The obligation of the Ministry of Transport to inform the public on its website at least once a year is specifically defined.
“After all that we have seen so far when it comes to devastation of the Tara River, we now have the situation that the state had a clear indication a year ago that the river was being polluted by waste waters from the construction site, even through collectors installed to prevent this.
As a result, not only was the public not aware of the fact that Tara was contaminated, but also that no one was responsible for allowing to continue with pollution, according to the findings of official institutions.
Unfortunately, this is only a continuation of bad practice of hiding sensitive information when it comes to construction of the highway, because in addition to hiding information about how much it actually costs us all, now we have the situation that the basic information about the state of the environment are also hidden from the public.
When it comes to this specific case, it is important to note that we learned about it thanks to reporting by citizens, thus I would like to invite all those who have information or suspect that the law is being violated to report it, saidDejan Milovac from MANS
Video from TV Vijesti
