The cleaning and closure of 77 landfills and dumps in North Macedonia starts this month

Фото: Бојан Блажевски

The selection of the two companies that will be monitoring the process is over and during this month the cleaning of landfills and dumps in the Eastern and the Northeastern Planning Regions will start , the Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning of North Macedonia announced for Meta.mk.

In the 18 municipalities in this part of the country, 70 illegal landfills (dumps) will be cleaned and 7 of the current non-standard municipality landfills, for which 2 companies from Germany and Turkey were selected. In the forthcoming period, they will have to work separately on the waste cleaning in both Planning Regions. At the same time, the re-cultivation of the non-standard municipality landfills will cost approximately 10 million EUR.

The Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning in an answer to Meta.mk explained that in the future, the municipalities and public communal enterprises will have clear authorizations on what to do with the locations that will be cleaned from the waste, for which agreements were signed with special obligations.

Once a year, the public enterprises will have to conduct monitoring of underground waters and a visual check of the terrain, to maintain the fence and the channel for atmospheric waters of the closed landfill. They will be obliged to cut the grass twice a year and to perform topographic surveillance regarding the sinking of the landfill’s surface and the stability of the landfill cover. After the eight-year of the landfill’s closure, the municipalities through the public enterprises are obliged to continue with the monitoring of the underground waters and topographic surveillance of the landfills.