Zagreb HDZ attacks Tomašević: ‘He hid for two days, now he is washing his hands’

“But you are responsible, Tomašević. Responsible.” With that accusation, Zagreb’s HDZ launched another attack on Mayor Tomislav Tomašević over the tar pits at Savica.

The party says 33,000 tonnes of hazardous industrial waste lie near the Petruševec water facility. It accused the mayor of staying silent for two days and then trying to distance himself from a problem that began before his term in office.

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But you are responsible, Tomašević. Responsible.

In a statement titled “The Politics of Washing Hands,” Zagreb HDZ said Tomašević had offered no answers capable of calming residents. Instead, it said, he had raised more questions by asking why he should be responsible for the Savica tar pits when he had been mayor for only five years.

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Why was groundwater monitoring stopped?

HDZ also pointed to Zagreb’s “Program of Remediation Measures Within the Sanitary Protection Zones of the City of Zagreb’s Water Sources.” The party said the document explicitly places the Savica tar pits in the second sanitary protection zone of the Petruševec water source and names the City of Zagreb as the body responsible for implementation.

The opposition party asked why groundwater monitoring had stopped, why earlier pollution measurements had never been presented to residents, and why remediation had not been prepared or adopted during Tomašević’s five years in office. It also questioned why Zagreb did not report the Savica tar pits to the Environmental Protection Fund as a contaminated hotspot in 2025. HDZ warned that the Petruševec facility supplies water to about 150,000 Zagreb residents and is threatened by the tar pits and the Jakuševec landfill.

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Why was the remediation not even prepared, let alone adopted, during his five years in power?