ZAGREB MAYOR VISITS CENTRAL WASTE DUMP

ZAGREB, Aug 27 (Hina) - Zagreb mayor Vlasta Pavic on Wednesday visited the city's central waste dump at Jakusevac, which is to be adjusted to European Union standards by mid-September at the latest. #L# Pavic said that the project of adjusting the waste dump, which in 1965 was an illegal waste depot, to EU standards was one of the biggest projects in Zagreb at present and an important ecological project aimed at bringing the country closer to European standards. "We have proven that deadlines and the financial plan can be met," said Zdravko Vac, the manager of ZGOS, the city's waste management company. He recalled that the project had been completed in less than three and a half years. The planned EUR90-million loan of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development for the project was reduced to 55 million in the meantime. The Jakusevac waste dump, once the largest waste depot in Europe, is only six kilometres from the city centre and three kilometres from one of the major drinking water reservoirs at Crnkovec. The main purpose of the project, ZGOS officials said, was to protect settlements, air and water. A representative of the Croatian Construction Institute, the company which drew up the project, said that by the year 2000 seven and a half million cubic metres of waste had been disposed of at Jakusevac on an area of 80 hectares, which was now reduced to 57 hectares. The waste dump, where more than a hundred trucks bring around a ton of waste every day, can take in 11.5 million cubic metres of waste and should be closed down by 2010. The waste dump has equipment for the purification of waste water, the only such machine in Croatia, said ZGOS deputy manager Zlatko Milanovic, adding that the company would launch in the autumn a test project of production of electricity from waste decomposition gases. (hina) rml