The Bukovo landfill is burning again. Residents of the surrounding villages, Krušje above all, are once more waking up in thick smoke and the smell of burnt plastic that washes out of neither curtains nor lungs. And once more everyone is out in the field - crews from Ohrid's public utility Komunalec and the territorial fire unit are cutting a firebreak and piling soil onto the hotspots.

Soil on fire. That is the technology of 2026 at the largest ecological blackspot in the entire southwest of the country.

The utility says additional quantities of soil are being delivered continuously to smother the smoke, and that crews are staying on site to prevent the fire from flaring up again beneath the surface layers of waste. That "beneath the surface layers" is the key phrase - a fire in a landfill is not extinguished, it is covered over and left to wait.

The company states that more than eight thousand cubic metres of soil have been brought to Bukovo this year to cover and stabilise parts of the landfill and to reduce the chance of a fire starting and spreading. Eight thousand cubic metres of soil - and the landfill caught fire anyway.

As for the cause, the authorities are not ruling out deliberate arson. The real cause will be established by the institutions through the appropriate procedure. Until then, as usual, nobody has a name.

The activists say what the institutions talk around

The "Goodbye Bukovo" initiative is blunter. For years they have warned that the frequent fires are a direct consequence of inadequate waste treatment and management, and that piecemeal interventions only postpone the problem - while the local population pays for it with their own health.

"The recurrence of these fires is the result of inadequate waste treatment," says activist Dragana Karašova, calling for urgent prevention and for the deadlines already set to be respected.

Deadlines. That is where both the real answer and the real problem sit. Permanently closing Bukovo depends on building the regional waste management centre in Novaci. According to the latest announcements from the responsible institutions, the project is proceeding on schedule, and the expectation is that all substandard landfills in the region will be closed by the end of 2027.

The end of 2027. That means at least two more summers in which Krušje counts the days with smoke. If the schedule holds - and the question none of the officials asks out loud is what happens if it does not. Until then, the institutions' answer stays the same: more soil.