They always knew there was something funny about the water.
In Komletinci, a village in eastern Croatia a stone’s throw from the Serbian border, it gurgles from the tap with a whiff of ammonia. Its colour varies from pale yellow to reddish brown. It tastes like rust.
However unpalatable, few people thought to doubt its safety. For 28 years, since the construction of a local plant to supply homes with treated groundwater, villagers have been holding their noses and drinking it.
But that started to change in 2014 after an information-technology engineer named Mirko Matijasevic stumbled across analysis of water samples on the website of the regional public water utility in the nearby city of Vinkovci.
The test results showed arsenic levels 13 times the legal limit.
Matijasevic, 55, had no idea at the time that arsenic in groundwater is a proven carcinogen, according to the World Health Organization, WHO. People who are exposed to it over many years have a greater chance of getting skin, lung and urinary tract cancers, numerous studies show.
But he had read enough murder mysteries to know arsenic is a poison.
“I think money is the reason the local government isn’t talking about this analysis, since this water that is unfit for drinking shouldn’t be sold for these ‘Zagreb’ [expensive] prices,” he wrote on his blog about daily happenings in Komletinci, where a tamburitza folk concert usually qualifies as big news.
He uploaded a screengrab of the analysis and pressed publish.
Reaction to his blog post in the village of 1,600 was initially dismissive, Matijasevic recalled.
“The water company in Vinkovci is where the ruling party [the Croatian Democratic Union] employs their people, so any negative article is considered an attack on them,” he said. “And when you attack the ruling party, you’re not considered a good citizen.”
But Matijasevic’s discovery got some people thinking. Mirjam Beslic, a 28-year-old mother of two, travelled 280 kilometres to Zagreb to have a 12-centimetre sample of her hair tested at the Institute for Medical Research and Occupational Health.
The tests showed arsenic levels of more than three times the normal amount for an adult woman.
“I haven’t had problems up to now, but my doctor told me I’ve been exposed for a long time and the risk of getting cancer is bigger,” she said.
When local authorities finally declared Komletinci’s water supply unfit to drink last April, after local media picked up the story, anxiety turned to anger.
“I’d prosecute all former water company directors and mayors,” said Ivan Miljak, 60, a retired waiter who was lining up with other villagers to fill plastic bottles from a cistern provided by the municipality near the main square.
For more read the full of article at The Balkaninsight
