Montenegro at a Loss to Deal with Impact of Lucrative Landfill

According to the findings of an investigation by BIRN and the Centre for Investigative Journalist Montenegro, CIN-CG, waste from other municipalities was disposed of at Mislov Do for years, in violation of the lease agreement, while municipal waste has been mixed with food, animal and chemical waste.

And it's the people of Niksic who are paying the price, not just in the quality of air. Data obtained by BIRN/CIN-CG from the municipality shows that between 2003 and April 2021 - when the last contract expired - more than 420,000 euros in public money was paid to lease the plot, which, if sold, would not fetch more than 10,000 euros on the current market.

During that period, every month, the municipality paid rent of 2,400 euros to the owner of the land, Miras Djurdjevac, a former local assembly councillor and director of the company 'Mislov Do', which the municipality hired to maintain the landfill.

Mislov Do was founded by Djurdjevac's son, Vukasin, who is engaged in the municipal Public Utility Company in charge of waste disposal and who was convicted alongside four others in 2014 over a brutal attack on journalist Lidija Nikcevic in January of that year.

Critics of the municipality's waste management practices say the deal raises suspicion.

"It is a matter of private property for which the people of Niksic pay and pay for something that is illegal," said Aleksandar Perovic, director of the Niksic-based environmental NGO Ozon.

"The law prohibits the mixing of hazardous waste with municipal waste and that is exactly why we say that this location is an environmental time bomb."

Harm to air, water, soil

Photo: CIN-CG/BIRN

Since the contract expired in April last year, waste is no longer dumped at...