The state of Bosnia’s rivers is catastrophic because hydropower plants do not respect the laws on acceptable river flow regulation, causing dry riverbeds, activists from a protest gathering in downtown Sarajevo said on Friday.

The gathering, organised by the Coalition for the Protection of Rivers, started at noon at Sarajevo’s Liberation Square.

“This public gathering is our response to the government’s years-long ignorance regarding the issue of ecologically acceptable river flow regulation,” said coordinator at the NGO, Milos Orlic.

The activists held up photographs of dry riverbeds at places where water intakes of hydropower plants were built in the country.

According to one of the NGO’s coordinators, Viktor Bijelic, the ecologically acceptable river flow is regulated by law but nearly no hydropower plant respects it. The consequences is the destruction of biodiversity, he said.

The hydropower plants also restrict access to water to local communities, he added.

“That is a big problem in Bosnia and Herzegovina and it will especially be one if a plan to build another 300 hydropower plants is realised,” Bijelic stressed, adding that regulation which was adopted in Bosnia's Federation (FBiH) region needs to also be adopted in the other semi-autonomous entity, Republika Srpska (RS) and that institutions and inspectors need to monitor Bosnia’s rivers better.

“If the inspectors do not conduct monitoring, hydropower plant owners will use the maximum amount of water without letting the biological minimum flow through so that plant and animal species can survive,” he stressed.

The gathering was part of the ‘Protectors of Rivers’ campaign, which implemented through a project funded by the EU and the Foreign Affairs Ministry of the Czech Republic as part of the ‘Transition’ programme.