Residents of Donje Primišlje conducted a multi-day investigation and discovered three locations where they claim festival sewage was illegally disposed of. The director of Wece claims the footage was edited and that his workers dumped nothing.
Residents of Donje Primišlje, a small settlement near Slunj, conducted a three-day investigation following this year's Modem Festival, convinced that the company responsible for emptying portable toilets illegally disposed of the waste in nearby forests. Their investigation resulted in the discovery of three forest locations they claim serve as illegal dumping sites, and they have reported their suspicions to the police, the State Inspectorate, Hrvatske vode, and Hrvatske šume.
According to a concerned resident, this is a serious environmental threat. "These are forest locations where not just tens, but possibly hundreds of cubic meters of sewage and chemical agents, which are an integral part of these toilets, have been dumped," he stated for OG Portal Ogulin. He added that entire forests reek of sewage, and the situation is further exacerbated by the karst terrain, which allows seepage into groundwater and nearby streams.
As key evidence, the residents, during their multi-day surveillance, filmed a tanker truck bearing the markings of the Slavonian company Wece, specialized in sewage transport. Although the video footage does not show the direct act of dumping, only movement along a forest road and stopping at the edge, the residents are convinced of their conclusions. As they say, it wasn't hard to put two and two together.
The owner and director of Wece, Željko Terzić, rejected all accusations in an interview with OG Portal Ogulin, asserting that the footage provided by the residents to the authorities was edited. "It's not true that we dump anything. The tanker is seen in the footage driving along a gravel road, but the entire footage isn't shown at once. They staged it, filmed multiple times and then spliced it together, showing driving, stopping, and dumping, but no one dumps anything," Terzić stated.
When asked by the journalist what his employees were doing with a sewage transport tanker in the middle of the forest, the director did not offer a concrete explanation. "They claim they found some sewage, but on the other side; my guys went towards Veljun," he said. He confirmed that Wece typically disposes of sewage at the collector in Karlovac, but when asked about the number of trips made during the festival, the communication was cut off due to signal loss.
What remains indisputable is that over the past few days, significant amounts of human sewage have been dumped in the Donje Primišlje area, which typically has only a few permanent residents. Given that the Modem Festival, with around ten thousand visitors, was held on the right bank of the Mrežnica River during the same period, residents are convinced that the waste originates from the festival.
Director Terzić, at the time of the interview, had just "finished a conversation at the station with Vodovod," suggesting that the authorities have already initiated certain checks. The final word on this environmental incident now rests with the inspection services to which the residents reported the case.
