No danger to environment and people's health - Initiative for construction of power plant in Užice adopted

The City Assembly of Užice has adopted the Initiative for realization of the power plant project, that is, construction of the power plant that will be producing electricity by burning public utility waste. The first such power plant in Serbia will be built within Regional sanitary landfill Duboko, in the vicinity of the city, where public utility waste from Užice and eight surrounding municipalities should be disposed starting from June 2010.

Partners in that project are the city and "Electric Power Company of Serbia" (EPS). The city's obligation is to provide the location and organize it, as well as to form a closed joint-stock company, of which primary activity will be production of electricity by burning public utility waste. In order for EPS to plan the budget for realization of that project for this year, it was necessary that the Užice's board members adopt that initiative.

The Initiative was preceded by the Memorandum on construction of the power plant, which was signed in October 2009, in the presence of Minister of Energy Petar Škundrić, by Jovan Marković, the Mayor of Užice, and Dragomir Marković, the CEO of EPS. Estimating that construction of the power plant would cost between 30 and 60m EUR, depending on which technology would be used, the CEO of EPS, Dragomir Marković, said on that occasion that about 250 tons of public utility waste was planned to be disposed at the landfill every day, so that the future power plant would have the strength of 7 to 10 MW.

Minister Škundrić said on that occasion that the Ministry of Energy and EPS supported Užice's decision to build the type of power plant that was not going to "represent the danger to environment and people's health".

- The product of the burning process will be small quantity of carbon-dioxide and solid matter that will later be used for construction of roads - said Minister Škundrić and pointed out that foreign investors were interested in that project. That means that the investment is not going to be a big financial burden for the city and EPS.