The Bill for 20 Years of Delay Has Arrived: Karepovac Is Full
Sixty years of a 'temporary solution' have come to an end. Split is left without space for its own waste, and residents will soon feel the impact of significantly higher bills.
Sixty years of a 'temporary solution' have come to an end. Split is left without space for its own waste, and residents will soon feel the impact of significantly higher bills.
In recent months, Split has been confronting a problem that has been postponed for decades: Karepovac, the city's waste disposal site opened in 1964, can no longer accommodate all of its municipal waste. This outcome was predicted in documents two decades old, and it is now translating into a concrete hit on residents' wallets and a search for alternative solutions that are far from ideal.
Karepovac was conceived as a transitional solution for about ten years, located just three hundred meters from the city's inhabited areas. For most of its existence, it was not a regulated sanitary landfill but a legalized dump lacking basic protections. Over the years, millions of cubic meters of waste have accumulated, reaching heights of up to forty meters in places, including household, industrial, and hazardous waste.
The danger peaked in the summer of 2017 when a fire broke out at the site, leading to the evacuation of nearby neighborhoods. It was then revealed that Karepovac had no hydrant network. The subsequent remediation, costing around 38 million euros and co-financed by the EU Cohesion Fund, was, in construction terms, merely extraordinary maintenance of the existing facility rather than the creation of a new system. A new fire involving bulky waste in October 2024 served as a reminder that the risk had not disappeared.
The key to a permanent solution was supposed to be the Waste Management Center in Lećevica. To build it, the Regional Clean Environment Center (RCCO), a company owned by the Split-Dalmatia County, was established back in 2005. Twenty years later, according to data from the Financial Agency (FINA), the company has only eight employees, and the first shovel at Lećevica has yet to break ground. Trial operations are announced for 2028, with a more realistic target of 2030.
The director of RCCO, Ivan Vukorepa, was appointed to the position in 2022. A political dispute over responsibility for the delay is ongoing. The opposition and parts of the public point fingers at Mayor Tomislav Šuta, noting that he himself was among the earlier directors of Lećevica, while those in power attribute the blame to "previous mandates."
For years, Split's waste management company, Čistoća, had some of the lowest bills and, at the same time, the highest salaries in the municipal utility sector in Croatia, with an average net salary of around 1,700 euros for about 392 employees. This system operated on three invisible supports: disposal at Karepovac was not priced according to actual costs, about twenty surrounding towns and municipalities paid Split for waste disposal, and the landfill itself was located within the city, eliminating transport costs.
The first pillar collapsed with the Regulation on the unit fee for waste disposal, which, since January 1, 2025, is charged per ton disposed. The fee was 30 euros last year, 35 euros this year, and is planned to rise to 50 euros by 2029. For Split, which disposes of around 115,000 tons of waste annually, this means a new cost on the order of four million euros per year. Had Lećevica been built, the fee would be zero euros.
The second pillar falls in August this year when Karepovac stops accepting waste from outside Split, affecting six municipalities in the Makarska Riviera as well. The consequences are already visible: last year's loss for Čistoća Split exceeded one million euros, and the fixed part of the fee for residents, currently around four euros, is slated to increase by at least 100 percent.
When Karepovac stops, the nearest alternative is the Sinj landfill at Mojanka. The idea of transferring Split's waste there was raised at a meeting at the Ministry in late 2025. Sinj's mayor, Miro Bulj, categorically rejected it, describing it as pressure and "blackmail."
Bulj cites a 2018 agreement according to which Mojanka was not to be closed before Lećevica opened. The State Inspectorate closed the landfill due to a lack of a use permit, but the Ministry overturned that decision, arguing that a ban can only be introduced once Lećevica becomes operational. Above the political debate lies a technical fact: waste at Mojanka is piled directly onto the ground, without a protective liner at the base. To the east lies Sinjsko Polje, through which the Cetina River flows-a river crucial for the water supply of a large part of Dalmatia.
The director of the Bikarac Waste Management Center near Šibenik stated that the people of Šibenik do not want to be "Dalmatia's dump" and that the facility will energetically recover fuel derived from waste from four centers: Bikarac, Biljane Donje, Lučino Razdolje, and, once operational, Lećevica. In this system, Split's role is as a hub that sends processed fuel, not a destination for raw waste.
Croatia's average waste separation rate in 2024 was 49 percent. Prelog achieves nearly 68 percent, and a number of municipalities exceed 50 percent, including the island of Krk. The lowest rates are in Dalmatia and Lika-precisely where public separation services have not even been introduced yet, shifting the explanation from residents' reluctance to the absence of a system.
Ljubljana went from nearly zero to around 70 percent separate collection, with the RCERO facility processing 150,000 tons of mixed waste and over 20,000 tons of biowaste annually, after which less than five percent ends up in a landfill. In Prelog, revenue from the sale of recycled materials, compost, and second-hand goods accounts for approximately 18 percent of total income. Both examples show that reforming collection preceded the construction of facilities, not the other way around.
