Veles air-quality station back online after August 14 outage; activists warn missing data weakens pollution control
Monitoring station in Veles restarted on August 14; activists warn that 45 days of missing summer data weaken the ability to track pollution.
The air-quality monitoring station operated by the Ministry of Environment in Veles resumed recording on the afternoon of August 14, after being offline since July 1. The station had also been inactive for seven days in June, leaving gaps in data during the summer: 45 consecutive days without measurements, or 52 days across a two-and-a-half-month span.
Why the gap matters
Local environmental activists warned that the absence of published measurements does not mean pollution disappeared. They say the interruption in monitoring removes the records authorities and researchers need to identify pollution peaks and sources.
“In Veles we often talk about a better and healthier life, but how can we achieve that if we remove precisely the mechanisms that should show us what air we breathe? Monitoring stations are not a luxury, but the basis for protecting health and the environment. When they do not operate, pollution does not disappear — the data about it disappears. With non-functional stations we also lose the database upon which decisions should be made, pollution sources determined and accountability sought. If we really want a better life in Veles, we don't need less measurement and less data, but more transparency, functional monitoring stations and publicly available data. We cannot solve the air problem if we first stop looking at it,” said Stevche Dechev, an eco-activist from the Impact Foundation.
The Ministry’s station is the official municipal instrument for continuous monitoring and its reopening restores a primary source of hourly and daily pollutant readings. Officials have not publicly explained the technical causes and the duration of the outage.
Activists and residents say the data gaps make it harder to demand remedial measures or to hold polluters and institutions accountable, because key episodes of elevated pollution may have gone unrecorded during the hottest weeks of the year.
Civic groups are calling for sustained operation, regular public publication of results and clear explanations whenever a station stops reporting — measures they say are essential if Veles is to reduce health risks linked to air pollution.
Photo: SDK.MK
