MASTER'S THESIS - SuSanA

6 Site visits and interviews with local stakeholders
6.4 Results of site visits and interviews
Visited sites were mainly located in the North or the center of the country and unfortunately no site was
visited in the South of Albania. Most of the visited areas were very different from each other. The site visits
covered villages in the plain land at lakes and coastlines as well as villages in the mountains and public and
private facilities.
Mostly, the villages in the mountains were very remote and scattered and do not experience big problems
with the discharge of wastewater as huses are far away from each other and fresh drinking water is taken
from springs in the mountains that have a very good quality. At least this is claimed by the local
responsibles. Wastewater seeks into the ground and seems not to affect neighbours if the distance between
the houses is sufficient. An example of such scattered houses is given in Figure 6.1 and Figure 6.2.
Figure 6.1: House in the commune Gurre (Niebel
2012)
Figure 6.2: Scattered houses in commune Qelez
(Niebel 2011)
In opposite, the areas on the plain land and along lakes or coastlines experience bigger problems
concerning wastewater handling. If a village has no public drinking water supply, the water is taken with
pumps from private wells and the quality can be very bad. As most often the so called septic tanks are not
lined, the wastewater seeks into the ground and may pollute groundwater that is used as drinking water.
Distances between toilet pits and wells are often not sufficient to provide absoprtion of pollutants by the
soil. If wastewater gets discharged into an open sewer and is not collected in a tank, it poses a health risk to
all people and animals around the open sewers. Bad odour occurs in the hot summer time, but even in the
winter the black wastewater can smell and will get washed out of the collectors onto streets and fields
when it rains. Open sewers of the municipality of Sukth are shown in Figure 6.3 and Figure 6.4 (p.78).
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