Lead, cadmium and arsenic at at least 13 sites, and there's no soil law: The draft is written, but not published

Macedonia has at least 13 sites with historic soil pollution - from OHIS in Skopje, through the smelter in Veles and the Lojane mine, to Jugohrom in Jegunovce. And since recently there's no law governing what is done with them. The latest amendments to the Environment Law deleted the provisions on managing contaminated areas, while the new Soil Protection Law is still sitting in a drawer.

That's the warning from the organisation Eko-svest, which on 16 October asked the Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning to urgently publish the draft law on ENER, the national register of draft legislation, and open a public consultation. According to them, the text has already been drafted by external experts and submitted to the ministry. The next step is simply to publish it - a step that, so far, isn't happening.

What lies in the soil

The list of hotspots is long and well known. At OHIS, the problem is waste contaminated with lindane, an insecticide from the HCH group; the ministry and international partners are working on removing waste from the small landfill, while the large one remains a separate challenge. Around the former lead and zinc smelter in Veles, scientific studies have found elevated concentrations of lead, cadmium, zinc, arsenic and mercury - at some of the sites tested, cadmium was three times and lead and zinc twice the reference intervention values under the Dutch standards used in the study.

At Lojane, the former arsenic and antimony mine, research has documented pollution of the soil, sediments and groundwater, and scientists warn that the residues are a potential source of pollution for the area between Lojane, Vaksince and Tabanovce. Also on the list are the Sasa, Zletovo, Toranica and Buchim mines, as well as Jugohrom. Older state documents, meanwhile, recorded as many as 16 industrially contaminated sites, depending on the scope of the inventory.

Polluted, but unprovable

This is the heart of the problem. As Professor Stafilov warns, Macedonia has limits for metals in vegetables, but no standard for permitted levels in soil. Without a law with limit values, polluted land can't legally be treated as a hotspot, the polluter can't be sanctioned, and an environmental lawsuit has nothing to stand on. The soil can be full of arsenic - and the state has no instrument to formally establish it.

Lead that damages the brain and nervous system in children, cadmium classified as a carcinogen, arsenic linked to several types of cancer - these aren't abstract terms, but substances that can escape industrial complexes through dust, irrigation water and food. The World Health Organization states that no level of lead exposure has been identified as completely safe.

The law is written. The experts have done their job. The question remains: why is the ministry waiting, and how many more years do the people of Veles, Lojane and Jegunovce have to live next to hotspots for which the state officially doesn't even have rules?