Struga had no water. People could not drink from the tap, or wash their hands. The cause was not drought, not a burst pipe, not an ageing network - two men and one company were mining ore near the springs that supply the town.

Police in Struga filed criminal charges against H.M., 50, and N.K., 54, both from the village of Velešta, and against a legal entity from the same village. The charges are usurpation of immovable property, unauthorised exploitation of mineral resources, endangering safety during construction works, and contamination of drinking water.

According to police, the digging was taking place across several cadastral plots - private, other people's, and state-owned - with no valid concession contracts. That means this is not a company that overstepped a permit. This is digging with no permit at all, on someone else's land, beside the Šum springs.

Thirty times over the limit

That is the number that says the most. The values measured in the drinking water exceeded permitted levels by more than 30 times. The result was a prolonged cut to the water supply and a ban on using the water for drinking, for personal hygiene and for washing hands.

A town with no water to wash hands with, in the twenty-sixth year of this century, because somebody was mining where they were not allowed to.

And this was not the first warning

The most uncomfortable detail in the whole story: six months ago the prosecution had already issued measures banning two companies from that area from accessing the plots and carrying out works near the Šum springs.

Six months. So somebody already knew digging was going on there, somebody already decided it had to stop, and somebody already put it in writing.

The ban existed. The digging continued. The water was contaminated.

The two men from Velešta are answering for what they did, and that is exactly as it should be - they dug, they chose to carry on. But alongside their responsibility stands a second question, and it is not for them: who was supposed to check whether the ban issued six months ago was being respected at all?

Because if the answer is nobody, then the next ban is worth exactly as much as this one was.