Political War Over Illegal Waste in Benkovac
Opposition and ruling parties on the ground, while residents wonder how 11,000 cubic meters of ground plastic ended up a mile and a half from the city center.
Opposition and ruling parties on the ground, while residents wonder how 11,000 cubic meters of ground plastic ended up a mile and a half from the city center.
On Thursday, August 13, 2026, Benkovac became the scene of a political clash after opposition and ruling party politicians simultaneously called press conferences. The trigger was an illegal waste dump located next to a former quarry, just 1.5 kilometers from the city center. According to HRT's report, residents of Benkovac and surrounding areas are deeply concerned about the composition of the waste, which is suspected to be as hazardous as that found in Gospić, about a hundred kilometers away.
Residents are wondering how such a large amount of waste could have been brought in without anyone knowing. "It's impossible to bring it in without anyone knowing, it's impossible, it's a lie! It's terrible; people will get sick, and they have nothing to do with it," HRT quotes unnamed Benkovac residents. The fear is heightened by the awareness that a potential environmental time bomb is nearby.
HDZ's mayor of Benkovac, Tomislav Bulić, admitted that he too was unaware of the dump. He announced that he would request the expert findings from USKOK and expects the relevant institutions to resolve the issue urgently. "We have already requested this in writing, and based on the information I have, we will receive the findings and immediately inform the public about everything that lies beneath us," Bulić stated.
Most politician Zvonimir Troskot accused organized groups of planning the dumping. "All of this was meticulously planned by the eco-mafia, whose names and companies are well known," Troskot said, adding that he holds the Government and Prime Minister Andrej Plenković most responsible. He also warned of long-term consequences: "Because that ground plastic is always full of PFAS, it's a forever chemical that, once it enters the ecosystem, as in Gospić, the processes last for decades."
President of the county SDP, Jure Zubčić, emphasized that citizens no longer trust institutions, recalling the case of Crno Brdo in Biljane Donje with toxic slag. "Crno Brdo in Biljane Donje stood for years; the Republic of Croatia paid fines to the European Commission because of it, and there is hardly a house in that place that hasn't lost someone to cancer," Zubčić said. He added that he and Silvana Čeko Jurišić from the Možemo party addressed the public with a message that neither citizens nor the opposition are hysterical, but that this is a big and serious problem. "We believe that the statement about hysteria and panic is an insult to all citizens. Ultimately, everything happening from Gospić, Benkovac, Varaždin, to Kistanje, Lovinac, and Štikada is the responsibility of Prime Minister Plenković. This is Plenković's garbage because for months he has failed to appoint a chief state inspector, and the one he appointed, who was removed by USKOK, was more concerned with filling his own pockets than preventing quarries and various karst holes from being filled with garbage that seeps into groundwater," Zubčić asserted.
Today, the dump was also visited by Zadar County Prefect Josip Bilaver, accompanied by HDZ MPs Ante Babić and Nikolina Baradić. Their words were directed at the opposition. "The only goal of the opposition, which came to Benkovac today, is to scare our citizens; they haven't solved a single waste problem," they said. They added: "What the opposition is doing, occasionally meeting and insinuating that HDZ is responsible for this waste dump, is a shameless lie."
Prefect Bilaver promised residents increased water quality monitoring and announced a remediation plan. "Work is already underway on a remediation plan for this dump; we want to help the city, and above all, the state will bear the largest financial burden of this cleanup," Bilaver said. The cleanup will certainly be challenging given that 11,000 cubic meters of ground plastic are buried at the site.
Zubčić also announced that SDP and Možemo will hire specialists and independent laboratories to conduct soil analysis because they do not trust institutions. "We do not trust Zadar County or its institutions because of the situation in Šepurine. For a decade, we have been pointing out and warning about a large illegal waste dump. It took ten years to start remediation. Crno Brdo in Biljane Donje, proven carcinogenic, stood untouched for years. Who knows what is being brought in," he said. He also cited the example of the Diklo landfill near Zadar, which is supposed to close on November 1, but the director of that company has refused for two months to provide contracts with two companies that bring in waste. "We don't know where it comes from or its origin. He claimed that only construction waste was being brought in, but who knows what is actually being brought," Zubčić said.
