Loznica demands urgent solution of environmental issues

Loznica demands urgent solution of environmental issues

The request will be filed to the Serbian government following the devastating results of the water quality testing at the Korenita River conducted by the Sabac Public Health Institute, the Loznica municipality posted on its website.

The Council has already set up a working group in charge of monitoring the realisation of requests, which will be involved in the everyday developments in the area which is a home to vulnerable group of citizens.

The goaf of the former antimony mine which flowed into the Korenita River has arrived at the confluence into the Drina River, Janko Aleksic of the Loznica City Council said and noted that the presence of heavy metals in the water is so high that the entire area should be declared as a site of an environmental catastrophe.

The latest analysis of water samples taken at four measuring stations are devastating, as iron, lead, cadmium, zinc, copper, arsenic, mercury, antimony and manganese are considerably above the measurement scales in most samples, Aleksic warned as quoted by Loznica Info.

Dragoslav Dobric of the Loznica City Council told Tanjug that in the quality tests conducted at the Korenita River, the Sabac Public Health Institute recorded values as many as some dozen times higher for iron, lead, antimony and arsenic.

As for the Jadar, the river water has been declared as non-usable due to the levels of antimony and arsenic, mercury and lead, which coloured the water grey.

Dobric underscored that during the extraordinary session of the Loznica City Council, experts said that hazardous heavy metals may accumulate in plants, animals and humans, which may prove dangerous over time.

He noted that Head for strategic documents in the Ministry of Agriculture and Environmental Protection Aleksandar Vesic explained that a special government working group has proposed measures for goaf repair which need to be approved by several ministries prior to the implementation.

Upon receiving approval, the Institute of Mining will establish whether the project can be implemented.

After heavy rains and floods in May that lead to the landslide of the mountain massif bordering with the Stolice flotation site, a total of three dams broke and several thousand cubic meters of goaf flowed out.