Since mid-January, when heavy rains hit Kukës, Lake Fierza has become a massive accumulation of garbage covering its surface and shores. Images from recent days show a worsening situation, despite the Municipality's efforts to clean it up through an ecological ship.

Local resident Agim Cengu says that the pollution of the lake has been a continuous phenomenon for years. According to him, even though the ecological ship works every day to remove waste, it cannot cope with the large influx that accumulates, especially on the shores where waste brought by river flows from Kosovo and North Macedonia ends up.

"The pollution has been going on for years. The ship cleans every day, but the waste is very large in quantity. With the heavy rainfall this year, the situation has worsened even more," he says.

According to Ceng, this year the pollution is greater due to the intense rainfall during the first two months of the year, which has brought a lot of waste to the lake. He emphasizes that, although cleaning is carried out regularly, waste continues to accumulate every day.

"They clean up today, they come back tomorrow. It's a cycle that never stops," said Cengu.

The pollution phenomenon, according to him, has been present since the construction of the Fierza HPP after 1978, when the lake began to serve as a large water reservoir. Cengu describes the situation as an ecological catastrophe, emphasizing that among the waste there are also pharmaceutical drugs and livestock feed thrown away in an uncontrolled manner.

"It's not just plastic here. There's also medicine, livestock feed, other waste that is dangerous." The waste on the shores of the lake has become a serious concern for residents of the surrounding villages, where many families graze their cattle near the water. Agim himself says that one of his cows died after consuming waste thrown on the shore.

"A cow died from the garbage. It's a big loss for us," he says.

Residents are seeking more sustainable solutions and cross-border cooperation to curb the pollution that, according to them, is transforming Lake Fierza from a natural asset into a dangerous hotbed of pollution.