Bogatic: Amended draft Spatial Plan entails no boron and lithium explorations in next 10 years

The municipality of Bogatic got an amended draft spatial plan from 2025 to 2035, in which there is no boron and lithium explorations in the territory of their municipality. Whether, after the incidents, arguments and protests, the demands of the authorities, the opposition and the residents are met and mining in Macva has been put to an end, is what the correspondent team from Sabac went to investigate.

Fertile arable land without boreholes, agriculture instead of mining, that’s what Macva wants, and they expect a binding document to confirm their views. Applicants for lithium and boron explorations have been excluded from the draft spatial plan for the next ten years.

– After the meeting at the Ministry of Mining and Energy, we got new conditions for the spatial plan, so I can inform you that in the spatial plan that we will adopt for the period from 2025 to 2035, there will be nothing related to lithium and boron. The citizens can rest assured that, in the territory of Macva, nothing will be done regarding that issue – says Dragoslav Josipovic, the president of the Municipal Assembly of Bogatic.

The amended plan was preceded by quarrels, political disagreements, non-adoption of the declaration, protests, incursions into the municipality building and the interruption of the meeting of the public review of the draft plan, more than a hundred submitted objections due to lithium, the expiration of the mandate of the municipal members of the planning commission and the cancellation of the second public review. In Bogatic, the position on mining is uniform – what’s different are the councilors’ options.

– As far as our group of citizens is concerned, we cannot be sure that this has ended, because the current situation teaches us that the Government of Serbia allegedly put an end to the Jadar project and it was later revived, so for us this is more of a comma than a full stop. At the moment, this acts as an encouragement to people to see that their engagement can give produce kind of result, but we have to continue to monitor what will happen next – believes Miroslav Panajotovic, from the “Pobeda za Macvu” parliamentary group.

For the locals, there is no doubt about living on and from the fields and agriculture for the future.

– They should know that Macva feeds everybody. I have no objection to them digging, no one can forbid that, but they should consider what happens to young folks – says Slobodan Vasiljevic from Uzvece.

– This is Macva and it can feed half of Serbia, and they want to drill here where they know they can. Why don’t the Germans drill over there, why here? – says Zoran Djonlic from Bogatic.

– It is probably much better that mining does not start and that we do what we have done before, that we do not poison the water, that we do not poison the land, because we will ruin everything we have, all the natural resources – says Milan Djurdjevic from Zminjak.

Until an official document is there – there will be no explorations in Macva - the forming of a new municipal commission, a new public review and forwarding to the Ministry of Construction for approval are to follow, and then adoption at the session of the Bogatic municipality assembly. Final confirmation should arrive by June at the latest.

Opština Bogatić

Municipality of Bogatić

Dragoslav Josipović

Miroslav Panajotović

Slobodan Vasiljević

Zoran Đonlić

Milan Đurđević

amended draft spatial plan

draft spatial plan

public review

lithium and boron exploration fields

conditions for preparation of draft spatial plan

Bogatić draft spatial plan

protest