problem caused by the houses is possible contamination of 16 Ranney collectors in this area, which are part of Belgrade's water supply system. The houses also physically obstruct access to the wells for the communal services. None of the floods that hit Serbia since then, including the massive 2009 European floods and 2014 Southeast Europe floods, prompted authorities to stop the destruction of the zone. Dragan Đilas, mayor of Belgrade 2008-13, publicly stated that city has no money to tangle the problem, thus allowing the continued construction. After the 2012 elections and the political change, it turned out that some of the highest officials of the new political elite have villas on the Savski Nasip, including the President of Serbia Tomislav Nikolić, his sons and his son's father-in-law, government minister and ambassador Milan Bačević. The Minister for Construction until 2014, Velimir Ilić publicly refused to demolish the illegal houses, saying that everything should be legalized. His successor, Zorana Mihajlović, addressed the issue several times, but didn't say or do anything to fix the problem. She was always talking about the legalization of the houses, like Ilić, but the law says that the constructions in the forbidden zone can't be legalized at all. Number of houses, in New Belgrade section only, grew to over 120 by 2017, so the path on the embankment was de facto turned into the street. That caused frequent clashes with the pedestrians, joggers and bicyclists as the majority of the proprietors of the illegal houses are wealthy and drive too fast over the embankment in powerful cars and SUVs. Since 2016, citizens began to gather at the entry point, protesting and blocking the illegal traffic. Protesters organized in several associations ("Streets for the bicyclists", "Savski Nasip") and even though the protests became regular, neither the city or state authorities have done anything to solve even the path problem, instead it appears as if they are enabling it. Serbian Academy of the engineering sciences issued a warning in November 2017 saying that the usurpation of the riparian zones is widespread in Serbia, but that Belgrade is the most endangered. They stated that construction is against several legislative acts (Spatial plan of Serbia, Law on waters, Criminal Law of Serbia) and described it as something "unheard in the civilized world". They pointed out that the "terrifying irresponsible destruction" is also colliding with the European Union floods directive which