MASTER'S THESIS - SuSanA

9 Conclusion
9 Conclusion
At the present situation, the performance of the Albanian water and wastewater sector is not satisfying.
Water supply and wastewater treatment and discharge coverage are low and the sector is not working costrecovering.
Baseline data of the sector is often not available or not consistent. The sector is not very well
structured and an overall planning is missing – at least until the Masterplan for the sector will be finnished.
Improvements of the (wastewater) situation focus mainly on the urban areas, while the rural areas lack
funding for their development. Even though the Masterplan that is under development now should address
the drinking water and wastewater problems, the wastewater treatment, especially in rural areas, is
neglected. One component of the GIZ „Water Sector Reform“ programme aims on tackling this problem by
implementing some small and medium size wastewater treatment plants in rural areas of Albania as
reference sites. This shall help to gain more experience with the technical solutions for wastewater
treatment in rural areas of Albania and to promote them. Local experts and companies have to be trained
and supported, what could be done with this sites.
Several site visits have been done between November 2011 and February 2012 in order to assess the
situation in rural areas of Albania and to get first impressions for the selection of such reference sites.
Nearly all the visited sites were very different, with different problems, needs and differences in people's
attitude towards the problems concerning the wastewater handling. Environmental and hygiene problems
due to inappropriate wastewater discharge occure mainly in dense agglomerations in the low lands, along
the coastline and in sensitive areas, like in protected parks and at lakes. In these places, people mostle
showed big interest in improving their sanitary situation. People in mountain areas with very scattered
houses do not experience such problems and therefore the wastewater handling is not a topic with priority
for local people and decision makers. Only in one out of eight visited villages, people were not interested in
improving their sanitary solution even though problems were obvious. In such a case, awareness raising and
training needs to come first. Technical improvement is only useful if peopel know about their current
problems and want to change them for the better. Implementation of technology can only be sustainable if
people see the need and accept the technology.
All in all, the village and site visits could not provide sufficient information to already plan a treatment
facility, but gave good insight into the current situation of rural areas in Albania. The study can be seen as a
good starting point for further assessment of the rural areas and selected villages, that was done in March
2012 by a German expert hired by GIZ. Results of this visit were not available at the the time this report was
written. The implementation of reference small size wastewater treatment plants in selected rural areas
shall take place in 2012. Depending on the local needs and conditions, several on-site and centralised
intensive and extensive technologies for wastewater treatment are available that would be suitable for rural
areas.
To support local decision makers of municipalities and communes in their efforts to implement wastewater
treatment plants, GIZ aims on publishing a guideline on how to do small size sanitation projects in rural
areas. Such a guideline will be a very helpful tool to spread small size sanitation technologies for rural areas
as the focus of the central government is not on this topic.
Improvement of the water supply service and especially of the problematic wastewater situation is a goal in
order to improve the living standard of the people, to protect the environment, especially in coastal and
sensitive areas, and to move towards the implementation of EU laws in oder to prepare Albania for its
application for EU membership.
98