The ban on drinking water from the Gostivar water supply remains in force, and now it's finally known what caused it. According to the director of the Food and Veterinary Agency, Oliver Milanov, illegal pumps had been installed directly into the distribution system and were drawing water from the Vardar river, with harmful substances, into it.

The details are frightening precisely because of how ordinary they are. The illegal connection was 800 to 900 meters outside the protected sanitary zones. According to the claims, around 25 June three submersible pumps were installed without a permit, allegedly to test the water pressure. By 16 July two pumps were still running - and all that time they were poisoning the water supply of an entire city. Laboratory samples from the Institute of Public Health confirmed heavy contamination in the surface sources, in the captured spring and in the network itself.

The criminal machinery got moving. Three managers from the „Komunalec” utility company were detained and brought before an investigating judge, charged with a serious offense against the environment through the contamination of drinking water - including the acting director, the technical supervisor and the head of the water sector.

But while the police detain the managers, health minister Sašo Klekovski is already building a wall around one institution. He stated that responsibility for the water quality „belongs to the public utility company,” which as the service provider is legally obliged to carry out checks. The Public Health Center in Tetovo, through its Gostivar branch, had a monitoring contract - but, the minister admits, it worked with a limited number of samples per year.

And here the real wound opens. The opposition points out that the first cases appeared on 13 July, after which around 200 citizens reported in every day. Detailed health recommendations weren't issued until 18 July. And only three days before the contamination was discovered, the Public Health Center reported that the water was safe to drink. So someone measured „safe” while the three pumps were already poisoning. When an institution tells you the water is clean and it isn't, that's not the mistake of one utility - it's the failure of an entire chain. The question „who is responsible” is only just beginning, and for now the accused are just the ones who fell first.