Novo Selo municipality

Let us protect the Smolare Waterfall

The municipality Novo Selo, Strumica, together with the local inhabitants from the village Smolare, raised an action for protecting the Smolare Waterfall surrounding, which has been polluted by cutting the woods and carving a path in the immediate surrounding of the waterfall by the local branch of the Public Enterprise "Makedonski Sumi". The PE does not recognize the decision for announcing the Smolare Waterfall a natural monument, passed by the municipality, in cooperation with the Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning of the Republic of Macedonia.

The municipality authorised the Legal Environmental Centre of the association Erina from Skopje to advocate it in the process of finding solution to this problem. Erina's legal centre referred to the Government and the competent ministries for environment and forestry asking them to stop the degradation of the waterfall's surrounding and to solve the dispute that refers to the decision for a natural monument. The action of the municipality and the local population was joined by the Foundations Open Society Institute Macedonia and King Bouduen from Belgium, with the donations of which last summer a path to the waterfall was built and turned it into a real attraction, thus attracting thousands of visitors which at the same time, encouraged the local development of the village Smolare. 
 

M.I.