Citizens to pay triple for waste disposal as Croatia fails to open new landfill

The Centar party is sounding the alarm over impending triple increases in waste disposal fees for citizens, attributing the potential hike to the prolonged failure to open the Lećevica landfill and the impending full capacity of the Karepovac site.

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The monthly bill for waste disposal could triple for an average household, not because any of us are throwing away more trash, but because one party has failed to do its job for twenty years.

Gorana Rosandić, a county councilor for Centar, stated that the Karepovac landfill will be full in less than a year, while Lećevica remains unopened. She criticized the current Waste Management Plan, arguing it merely documents the problem rather than solving the county's biggest communal issue. Lećevica is not projected to enter trial operation until 2028, with potential delays pushing its full opening to 2030, leaving a significant gap between Karepovac's closure and Lećevica's operation.

During this interim period, waste from the region will be transported hundreds of kilometers to landfills in Šibenik and the Zadar hinterland. Rosandić estimates that each kilometer traveled will be paid for by citizens, leading to a potential tripling of monthly waste disposal bills. She squarely blamed the HDZ party, which has managed the Regional Center for Clean Environment for two decades, for this situation.

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Lećevica is entering trial operation only in 2028, although everything indicates that it will be only in 2030. Between the closure of Karepovac and its opening, there is a gap of at least a year.

Centar highlighted that the county's own figures show a decline in waste separation rates, falling to around 28 percent against a target of 55 percent, with only 1.6 percent of bio-waste being separated compared to a goal of 36 percent. Furthermore, the Lećevica center was designed to process 110,000 tons annually, while the county produces nearly 190,000 tons. Bojan Ivošević added that the government might offer co-financing for waste transport, amounting to one million euros per county, to mitigate the inevitable rise in costs driven by HDZ's alleged incompetence.

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This is a continuation of HDZ's inability to solve the waste problem in our county, and as things stand, the Croatian government will soon confirm that, regarding waste management, our prefect and his Dubrovnik-Neretva colleague are considered incompetent.