With a direct bus line over the Pancevo Bridge, Krnjaca is just 15 minutes from the plush hotels and fashion stores of central Belgrade. But proximity to the capital’s downtown does not translate into advanced waste-water treatment. Instead, Krnjaca, which sits on the left bank of the Danube, sends wastewater from homes and businesses down drainage channels once used for irrigation when most of the land was arable.
It flows straight into the river, while residents hold their noses as they cross the bridges spanning these channels. “There’s no life here [in the channels]; it’s pure sewage,” said Dragomir Stankovic, head of the local activist organisation Union Third Belgrade. “We don’t call these drainage channels anymore, but faecal channels.
” Miodrag Popovic, executive director of Jaroslav Cerni Water Institute, said it is lucky there is no heavy industry in the area, but even organic matter “can seriously threaten the quality of the watercourse and affect health, and diseases may appear as a consequence of all this”. The problem, however, is far greater than only Krnjaca. Please login to your account below if you are already a Premium Subscriber.
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