Despite years of promises and billion-euro deals, Serbia treats less than 15% of its wastewater, leaving the Sava and Danube heavily polluted and major infrastructure projects years behind schedule. From N1.
Passing by the Ada Huja neighborhood of Belgrade in the summer is an almost impossible mission without a hand over your nose. From that branch of the Danube, near the Belgrade settlement of Visnjica, comes an unbearable stench due to feces, dead fish, and stagnant water.
From May to September, the sight and smell point to a decades-old problem – Belgrade’s sewage system and wastewater that ends up in rivers.
Belgrade is the only European metropolis that discharges wastewater directly into its two rivers, the Sava and the Danube.
The result? Every year in Serbia, the amount of feces that would fill 120,000 Olympic swimming pools is poured into nature – half of that in the capital city alone.
Are the Sava and the Danube Poisonous?
Official institutions reassure the public, but the experiences of individual researchers, who also became swimmers, say otherwise.
German chemist Andreas Fat, who swam 3,000 kilometers along the Danube in 2022, gave up in Belgrade, just because feces also swim in this river in Serbia.
“Due to the amount of bacteria that flows in, it is a big challenge to swim in Belgrade. The consequence of contact with the Danube water can be an infection with E. coli,” Fat’s team said.
In 2019, an Austrian university team confirmed what the people of Belgrade feel – the Danube is polluted with feces along its entire course through Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria.
The most critical points are Novi Sad, a city in northern Serbia, and Belgrade, where scientists recorded extremely high levels of E. coli.
However, paradoxically, the analyses show that the water of the Danube on its way out of Serbia, downstream from Djerdap, is cleaner than when it enters the country.
Miodrag Popovic, technical director of the Jaroslav Cerni Water Institute (JCWI), explained this by the ability of the river to purify itself.
“The Danube and the Sava are among the largest European rivers with an extremely high biological potential for the decomposition of biodegradable organic matter and self-purification. Thanks to this ability, the concentrations of potentially harmful biodegradable organic matter are quickly reduced to levels that do not significantly endanger the aquatic ecosystem,” Popovic said. “Regardless of that, we believe that the construction of a city wastewater treatment plant would certainly contribute to better preservation of the water quality of the Sava and Danube.”
There is no publicly available data on the quality of water in Belgrade itself, and the Institute for Public Health did not provide it to the editorial office of N1.
According to data from the Bureau of Statistics from 2019, Serbia annually produces around 1.145 billion cubic meters of wastewater, but according to Eurostat, less than 15% is treated.
“It’s a big insult for everyone,” Katarina Baletic, a journalist from the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), said.
She added that the advertisements of the pre-election campaigns of the ruling party show the luminous buildings of the luxury neighborhood of the Belgrade Waterfront, which was practically built on a river full of sewage.
“Even if we are lucky enough that the Danube and the Sava are big enough rivers to handle the carelessness of our authorities and to process everything we dump into them, you can’t help but wonder – is it possible for officials to talk to us about flying cars and dolphinariums in a city where sewage is discharged directly into the rivers?” Baletic asked.
Belgrade and Veliko Selo
Despite the projects of the high-profile international exhibition EXPO 2027 – intended to transform the city’s image – a third of Belgrade residents remain without sewer connections.
The completion of the Interceptor, a wastewater treatment project in Belgrade, whose construction began in the 1970s, is still awaited.
In 2020, the Chinese company China Machinery Engineering Corporation (CMEC) was chosen for this job.
According to the conceptual solution, after the construction of the sewage network, all wastewater that is currently discharged into the Sava and the Danube should be sent for processing to a factory in Veliko Selo, the construction of which has been announced for years.
The latest estimates were that it will be finished in 2025, as promised by former Prime Minister Ana Brnabic, or in 2029, according to the announcements of former Minister of Construction and Infrastructure Goran Vesic.
However, there is no indication of any work on the ground.
The place where one of the promised factories should stand is still a meadow, with the remains of concrete structures overgrown with weeds and grass.
Piles are sticking out of the ground, and the opposition points out that the government did not only change the start and end dates of the works, but also the price.
According to the first claims of the government representatives, the price was half a billion euros, but it soon grew to 1 billion euros, said Stefan Simic, member of the opposition Movement of Free Citizens.
The office of Mayor Aleksandar Sapic of Belgrade has not responded to N1’s questions about the construction of a wastewater treatment plant and its price.
“The state’s solution to this problem has never been a priority,” said BIRN’s Baletic. “If it had been a real priority, the state would have found a way, as has been the case so far with all projects that were important to the government. There were no obstacles at all.”
According to JCWI, the state – as part of the above-mentioned contract with CMEC, ordered the creation of dedicated strategic studies, which determine the quantity and quality of wastewater, the technological concept of purification, and the final disposal of sludge, which remains as a result of the purification process. The studies were carried out by JCWI in cooperation with the French environmental services company SUEZ.
Where Is Serbia Today?
Although the largest city in Serbia, the capital Belgrade is not alone in this problem. The inhabitants of Novi Sad, Nis, Zrenjanin, Pozarevac, Kraljevo, Cacak, and Uzice are also awaiting wastewater treatment plants.
Government representatives promise to solve this problem almost completely by 2027 with an investment of 5 billion euros. In June last year, the Ministry of Construction, Transport, and Infrastructure published a study that provides an overview of the state of affairs on the ground.
According to the study, “the ministry is currently implementing programs and projects for the construction of communal sewage infrastructure, within which the construction or reconstruction of 177 wastewater treatment plants in the Republic of Serbia is planned.”
At the moment there are only 50 such plants in the country, some of which are not in operation, and some of which are completely devastated.
“The results are neither satisfactory nor optimal, neither in terms of environmental protection nor in economic terms,” said Mirko Popovic from the Regulatory Institute for Renewable Energy (RERI).
JCWI estimated that the construction of functional sewage networks and facilities for the processing of wastewater and disposing of sludge in cities requires about 10 billion euros.
“The assumption is that this investment can be realized in the next 10 to 15 years,” according to JCWI.
The construction of a sewage network and the facilities for processing wastewater in about 65 cities and municipalities is planned within the framework of the program Cista Srbija – Clean Serbia. According to Forbes Serbia, Cista Srbija is implemented on the basis of an interstate agreement with China. The value of the project is 3.2 billion euros and was agreed upon without any tender with the China Road and Bridge Corporation.
Investigative journalists who follow this topic also warn about the state’s way of doing business with Chinese companies.
“What experience has taught us is that in dealings with Chinese partners, the state often looks to bypass rules that bother it, such as procedures or competition, to choose its own suitable subcontractors, to play with the prices of works that later go sky high,” said Baletic.
According to RERI, the state took loans first, and only then made a serious analysis of real needs.
“Elementary logic and common sense dictate that the analysis should first be done; weaknesses and mistakes in the previous period should be determined; the needs and capacities of cities and municipalities should be determined; and only then should one enter into negotiations with creditors and investors,” said RERI’s Popovic.
The money mainly comes from credit arrangements of the European Union, the European Investment Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, as well as on the basis of bilateral agreements with Germany, Hungary, and the United Arab Emirates, according to a RERI analysis.
“Projects for the construction of wastewater treatment plants are like loot. People who occupy key positions in institutions have turned the construction of municipal infrastructure for wastewater treatment into trade with foreign partners.”
RERI warned that confidentiality of data and documentation are common to all these contracts.
What Was Promised?
The state plans to build a sewage system for two and a half million people by 2027.
When N1 asked how far the construction of the sewerage system has come and whether this goal will be met, we did not receive an answer from a state representative.
“Judging by the current dynamics of planning and construction of wastewater treatment plants and sewage infrastructure, there is no doubt that in 2027, Serbia will be in a similar situation to the one it is in now,” Mirko Popovic said. “Maybe even worse because the old infrastructure requires maintenance.”
In its promises in the Skok u Buducnost – Leap into the Future – program, the Serbian government said that solving the issue of wastewater and sewage would have an immeasurable effect: drinking water would be preserved, river pollution – which is at a critical level – would be prevented, and Serbia would fulfill some of the key items on its European path.
And that path will be long, because in Europe only Malta is worse in this regard, while the average of the European Union is five times better.
When it comes to countries in the region, Albania processes about 26% of wastewater, and Hungary more than 80%. There are also countries in Europe that process 100% of wastewater, and the Netherlands, Norway, and Austria are at the very top.
Filip Lukic is a producer and presenter at N1 TV in Belgrade, where this article originally appeared in Serbian. Republished by permission. He graduated in journalism from the Faculty of Political Sciences and completed a master’s degree in the sociology of European integration in Berlin. He is the author of several documentary films and a recipient of the “Best Young Journalist” award.
The article was translated by the Association for International Affairs in Prague.
