Tons of trash clogs a river in Bosnia. It's a seasonal problem that activists want an end to

Tons of garbage floats down a river at least twice a year and ends up near the eastern Bosnian town of Visegrad behind a barrier installed by a local hydroelectric plant

VISEGRAD, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- With predictable seasonality, tons of garbage floats down a river at least twice a year and ends up near the eastern Bosnian town of Visegrad behind a barrier installed by a local hydroelectric plant.

An environmental activist watched as workers removed trash from the river.

“New year, new problems or rather old problems with new garbage floating our way,” Dejan Furtula of the environmental group Eko Centar Visegrad said Wednesday.

Garbage from unauthorized waste dumps dotting the Western Balkans is carried year-round by the Drina River and its tributaries in Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro toward Visegrad, and further on to the Danube River, into which the Drina eventually flows.

But during the wet weather of winter and early spring the waterways in the region swell and sweep up such a huge amount of trash from dozens of illegal landfills along their banks that it can't escape the hold of the river fencing installed by the Bosnian hydroelectric plant a few kilometers upstream from its dam near Visegrad.