I wish I had a photo of the hydroelectric dam on the Zeljeznica River near Trnovo. Then I wouldn't need to write a word. The old cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words would certainly hold true on this occasion. But being that I don't have a picture – here are my words. Don't worry, I'll spare you all from a thousand of them.
We took a nice drive in the mountains yesterday. Snow still blocked a lot of fun highland dirt roads so we pretty much stuck to the asphalt and meandered throughout Bjelasnica and Treskavica…eventually coming out somewhere near Trnovo. On the way back to Sarajevo, on the Federation side, is a dam. Or should I say was.
The entire grounds surrounding the dam sort of looks like when an avalanche starts and the ground breaks up in what looks like large steps or blocks. There was a brand new house, certainly built with taxpayers money, for the EP folks to enjoy an outing in nature. Half of this new and expensive house has made its way down the hillside. As for the hillside, well, that made its way to the main station and crushed it like it was in Sendai, Japan and not Trnovo.
So how about a little reality check…
This small and hugely expensive disaster ALL happened under the careful watch and scrutiny of ELEKTROPRIVREDA BIH. Their experts designed it, built it, allowed the house to be built above it. And we're entrusting them to embark on major dam construction all over the construction!? Yugoslavia was a different era – the engineering corps that x-yu produced were world class and respected all over the world. EP management and its let-take-a-shortcut, criminal cronies (mainly from the Kante za BiH party) have proved time and time again that the only activities they are good at are illegal ones.
The English engineer I was traveling with noticed several things just by a quick 5 minute peek at the mess that was not too long ago a functional dam. He said the water levels created by the dam seemed to saturate into the hillside, making it unstable and sending the whole side of the hill and millions of your tax money crashing into the river. That was a 5 minute assessment. The nimrods at EP didn't help matters much by cutting down a few trees to build their weekend mansion.
For all you pro-dammers, keep in mind that they're the ones that are going to be responsible for building 90 meter high dam walls that have ten of thousands of people living downstream from them. To the people of Konjic, Gorazde and wherever Heco, Safa and company plan to ruin your backyard…i'd get the fuck out of Dodge if I were you.
