Paljuvi is a

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred ...

in the

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

of Ub,

Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hungar ...

. According to the 2011 census, the village has a population of 691 people.Popis stanovništva, domaćinstava i Stanova 2002. Knjiga 1: Nacionalna ili etnička pripadnost po naseljima. Republika Srbija, Republički zavod za statistiku Beograd 2003.

Lake Paljuvi

Lake Paljuvi, or Paljuvi-Viš Reservoir, was built in 1988 when the Kladnica river was dammed. Within the

Kolubara The Kolubara ( sr-cyr, Колубара, ) is a long river in western Serbia; it is an eastern, right tributary to the Sava river. General overview Kolubara is formed by the two small rivers Obnica and Jablanica. ''Obnica'' is the river in W ...

river watershed, it was created specifically for the protection of the

open-pit mine Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock (geology), rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a Borrow pit, b ...

Zapadno Polje, part of the vast Kolubara mines ("RB Kolubara") as the Kolubara is notoriously flooding river, so as for the nearby

thermal power station A thermal power station is a type of power station in which heat energy is converted to electrical energy. In a steam-generating cycle heat is used to boil water in a large pressure vessel to produce high-pressure steam, which drives a stea ...

. Projected to receive the surplus of water, the lake is connected to the small Vraničina river by the drainage tunnel. The reservoir was mostly kept almost empty, so that it would be ready to receive the water and in the next 25 years there was never an overspill of the water over the dam, as the drainage tunnel was always operational. In 2008, RB Kolubara, which administered the reservoir handed over the care over it to the local fishing association from

Valjevo Valjevo (Serbian Cyrillic: Ваљево, ) is a city and the administrative center of the Kolubara District in western Serbia. According to the 2011 census, the administrative area of Valjevo had 90,312 inhabitants, 59,073 of whom were urban dwell ...

, "Eko Ribarstvo". In order to enhance the fish production, they filled the reservoir, removed some of the equipment while the rest rusted in time, closed the

sluice gate Sluice ( ) is a word for a channel controlled at its head by a movable gate which is called a sluice gate. A sluice gate is traditionally a wood or metal barrier sliding in grooves that are set in the sides of the waterway and can be considered ...

s and welded the drainage hatchets. Unlike the

Rovni Lake Rovni Lake ( sr, Ровни језеро, Rovni јezero) is a water reservoir in western Serbia, created by damming the Jablanica river. It is located between the villages of Stubo and Rovni, from the city of Valjevo. The construction of the St ...

, system at the Lake Paljuvi failed completely during the catastrophic

2014 Southeast Europe floods Between 13 and 18 May 2014 a low-pressure cyclone designated ''Tamara'' and ''Yvette'' affected a large area of Southeastern and Central Europe, causing floods and landslides. Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina suffered the greatest damage, as the ...

. State water directory ordered emptying of the lake only on 12 May, two days before the fatal floods occurred. When the torrent hit the full reservoir on 14 May it began to overspill and the water directly rushed into the Kolubara and flooded the mines. At that point, draining the water through the tunnel was of no help. "Eko Ribarstvo" claimed that the lake was not full and that their job was to take care of the fish, while the lake was in care of RB Kolubara, adding that they needed 20 days to empty the lake but instead they were told to empty it only 2 days before and that "no one could expect so much rain in 7 days". Still, according to the official specifications, emptying of the lake lasts from 16 to 21 days depending on the water level, so it means that it was almost full. Experts added that there are, or should be, plans with the timetable when the reservoirs are to be filled and emptied, and that when there is a rainy season, levels should be minimal so there will be no surprise when the torrents form. RB Kolubara admitted that parts of its own corporation should operate the lake, but that there is no proper paperwork, as there are still some unsolved property ownership issues. If empty and properly maintained, Paljuvi Lake should be able to prevent flooding even during the millennial floods.

References

{{Kolubara District Populated places in Kolubara District