From 26 August, Galicnik is under water rationing - the supply is cut every evening from 9pm to 6am. The official explanation is the dry spell and increased consumption. But there is another notice from the local community council, published earlier, that is far more unpleasant to read.

Someone deliberately put wood, rope and other foreign material into the public drinking-water reservoir.

This is not negligence, not a fallen branch, not dirt carried in by the wind. The Galicnik council addresses the culprit directly, in the second person, as a known recipient: "To the person who deliberately introduced wood, rope or other foreign material into the drinking-water reservoir".

When the village council has to quote the Criminal Code at you itself

What follows in that notice is something you will rarely see in a village council statement - a full legal description of the criminal offence, with article and paragraph.

They warn that such conduct may constitute an offence under article 219 of the Criminal Code, "Contamination of drinking water", which reads: "Whoever renders drinking water unusable with a harmful substance in springs, wells, cisterns or reservoirs, or any other drinking water, shall be punished with a fine or imprisonment of up to three years".

They do not stop there. Since the reservoir is public and several families use the water, they announce that the application of article 291 will also be examined - "Destruction or damage of public installations", which for disabling public water installations with significant disruption to citizens' ordinary life carries six months to five years in prison.

Photographs, institutions and cameras that are still to come

The Galicnik council says the photographs have been sent to the competent institutions and that video-surveillance cameras will be installed around the reservoir as soon as possible.

Read that sentence again. The village has photographs of the act, knows the article of the law, has informed the institutions - and in the meantime is buying cameras for itself, because clearly nobody else is going to.

Galicnik is not an anonymous place. It is one of Macedonia's best-known villages, the image the entire brand of Macedonian mountain tourism lives off. And in that village someone is throwing rope into the drinking-water reservoir while drought restrictions are in force.

The appeal that lands on the wrong people's backs

The ending is a classic. The council appeals to all residents and visitors to use water sensibly and responsibly, strictly for essential needs, and to avoid watering their yards. With shared responsibility, they say, stable supply through the dry period can be maintained.

In other words: everybody ration, because one man does as he pleases with the shared reservoir. It is a pattern Macedonia knows by heart - an individual does the damage, the burden is split among everyone, and the question of whether anyone will actually answer for it stays open while the village buys its own camera.