Dragocaj Water Outage Protest, Utility Sets Friday Deadline

Residents of the Banja Luka neighborhood of Dragocaj are gathering today at 6 p.m. on the main road by the traffic light for a peaceful protest over a water outage that, they say, has now lasted five days straight, right in the middle of the hottest stretch of the summer. For readers in Serbia this is not some distant utility footnote: it concerns the largest city in Republika Srpska, and a breakdown that has dragged on week after week since June, with deadlines that keep sliding forward by a few days each time.

The Dragocaj water protest did not appear overnight. Because of rising consumption, the utility company Vodovod introduced controlled supply back in June for neighborhoods fed by the Prijakovci and Ramici reservoirs, and parts of Dragocaj went dry for as long as 15 days at a stretch over the summer. Residents had water trucked in by tankers. The organizers describe the gathering as a message against the decisions and neglect of institutions that, in their words, leave people without basic living conditions.

Why did Dragocaj run out of water?

The utility’s explanation points not to a shortage at the source but to conditions on the network. Part of the neighborhood, including the road to Gradina, sits in a higher supply zone and only gets water once the system has been filled continuously. Under controlled delivery, part of the pipeline stays empty, so overnight buildup never creates enough pressure to reach the top. Residents of Karalici and Piljagici, on another branch of the network, face the same problem.

Two additional breakdowns made things worse. During roadwork on the expressway, a pipe 300 millimeters in diameter was damaged, losing around 3,000 cubic meters of water, enough to have supplied the area for three to four days. A few days later, a pipe burst on the old road toward Prijedor, forcing crews to rearrange their work schedule just to keep any supply flowing to Dragocaj at all.

Danijel Dojcinovic, deputy head of the Dragocaj local community council, confirmed there was still no water as of Monday.

“Residents are at the end of their patience over this problem. We have no water, people are genuinely furious.”

In the neighboring Potkozarje community the situation is similar, with an extra burden on households that keep livestock. The local council president there, Maja Karalic, summed up the two days on, two days off pattern in one line: “We’re all looking up at the sky, waiting for rain.”

What the utility is promising

Banja Luka Vodovod director Radovan Majkic has, for the first time, put a firm date on the fix. The technical part of the work on the Tunjice system wraps up Friday, after which testing, flushing and filling of the system follow, with stabilization expected next Friday or Saturday.

“On Friday we finish the technical part of the work. After that come testing, flushing and filling of the system.”

Majkic maintains that about 98 percent of the city’s territory has stable supply and that the problem is purely technical, adding a warning that some residents are opening and closing valves on the network themselves, which only makes the crews’ job harder. Miroslav Sevo, deputy commander of the City Emergency Situations Staff, called for the shortage not to be turned into a political issue, noting that politics can wait but water cannot. Dragan Babic, head of the Civil Protection Department, announced that all requests for tanker deliveries will be met within the next seven to ten days, since the work has been slowed by wildfires in Misin Han and Barlovci.

A deadline that keeps sliding forward

This is where the frustration really comes from. Banja Luka mayor Drasko Stanivukovic had earlier announced that the Tunjice 1 and 2 systems could be up and running from the following week, meaning in the first half of August, and that after the initial testing the issue would no longer be a topic in the city. The Vodovod director’s new deadline, next Friday or Saturday, falls on August 14 and 15, right at the edge of that earlier promise, and Majkic has already added that any problems during testing could push the work back by several more days.

Residents are not taking to the street over a single outage, then, but over a string of deadlines that has kept shifting from June all the way to August. If the Tunjice system is brought online gradually, as announced, the first reliable sign will not be a press statement but water pressure in the higher zones of Dragocaj, Karalici and Piljagici, since that is exactly where the fault shows up first. The next checkpoint is the weekend before the system is tested.