Buško Blato or Buško Jezero is an accumulation lake located on the south side of Livanjsko Polje and northwest of Duvanjsko Polje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The name is also a reference to the area surrounding the lake which includes a number of villages, of which Prisoje is the largest.

Hydropower and irrigation system

Buško Blato (blato meaning ‘mud’ or ‘swamp’ in Bosnian) was essentially farmland up until 1974 when it was converted into a lake (artificial reservoir). The hydroelectric power plant system was conceived mainly to provide electricity for the Dalmatian coastline and further development of tourism.

The governments of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia (republics within Yugoslavia at the time) worked together on a project to build a hydroelectric power plant in Rudo (municipality of Otok in Croatia) called HE Orlovac that would have an output of 237 MW and an average annual yield of 366 GWh. The Bistrica river is largest, and forms Lipsko Lake, near village of Lipa, which is first and smaller of two artificial reservoirs in hydroelectric power plant system Buško Blato – HE Orlovac, other being Buško Blato reservoir. In this system Lipsko Lake is a compensation basin and serves for regulation of an outflow of water toward intake facility at penstock station “Lipa” at the foot of Kamešnica mountain, and across the border into Croatia where hydroelectric power plant “HE Orlovac” is situated. Lipsko Lake is connected with much larger reservoir of Buško Blato, whose head can rise above head of Lipsko Lake up to several meters, via the reversible canal of “Lipsko-Buško” where it stores an excess waters from Livanjsko Polje and the Bistrica, especially during flooding season and high precipitation periods. For transfer of these waters over the barrage “Podgradina”, at village Podgradina, into Buško Blato reservoir, system uses reversible pumping station “Buško Blato”, built at the point where canal reaches barrage.