 For decades, heavy industry and inadequate sewerage facilities polluted the picturesque Kastela and Trogir Bays on the Croatian coast, threatening to turn a historic tourist area into an environmental hotspot.
The last 50 years saw scenic villages dotting the coastline devolve into wastelands, as industrial complexes—including a chemical plant, a cementmill, an iron-mill and a shipyard—rose to dominate the landscape. Houses and trees were coated with soot, the blue Adriatic Sea turned dark gray, and pollutants discharging into the water decimated marine life.
Local kids, like 12 year-olds Luka and Duje, still spend their summers hanging out on these beaches, but they can’t believe that once, not so long ago, the coastline was pristine and the sea did not give off foul odor. At the request of the Croatian government in 1998, the World Bank provided $36.6 million for a project to reduce wastewater discharges into the bay, and to improve the delivery of drinking water.
The project, known as the EKO Kastela Bay project, is restoring beaches along the coastline between Split and Trogir, two ancient Roman towns on the UNESCO list of historic places. The project is building underwater tunnels that will clean sewage water, and pump it out further into the open sea. The main tunnel is designed to restore the bay’s ecological balance.
A smaller component of the project is improving the delivery and quality of drinking water to reduce intermittent water shortages that occasionally occur in smaller villages in this arid, Mediterranean climate.
Luka, Duje and their friends have been following the project with great interest. They are learning about it in school, seeing progress first-hand, and some of their parents work on it. They are in awe of both the big machines that clean the water and the idea that the beaches once again will look just like they did when their grandparents were young.
“The pipes they laid under the sea were so long that they couldn’t come by land on trucks, but had to be hauled in by boats,” recalls Luka. “I can’t wait for the project to be done. Then, we will have a clean sea that doesn’t smell, and enough drinking water all the time,” says Duje.
Updated: November 2003
|
RSS