Audit/ Capital city has zero wastewater treatment plants, discharges into the Tirana and Lana rivers

2025-12-31 13:57:00, Aktualitet CNA

Audit/ Capital city has zero wastewater treatment plants, discharges into the

Tirana is the capital city of 800,000 inhabitants and has no wastewater treatment plant. An audit by the Supreme State Audit Office focusing on the Lana River finds that wastewater continues to flow into this river and the Tirana River.

The SAI argues that the process of environmental treatment of wastewater under the law “On the treatment of wastewater” aims, among other things, to treat wastewater at an earlier stage, so as not to hinder the further processing and use of wastewater, to reduce as much as possible the free movement of wastewater and to treat it as close to the source and in the nearest plant, as well as to prevent environmental pollution from wastewater and limit the impact when it occurs. Although this is clear in law, in practice in Tirana this is not applied in this way.

"The urban waters of the capital, where according to INSTAT, around 800 thousand inhabitants live, continue to flow into rivers without any treatment, transforming the Tirana and Lana rivers, according to reports from state institutions, into the most polluted areas of the country," the audit assesses.

In fact, Tirana would already have a plant that was planned to be built in Kashar, but this project ended up in Arbitration where the company that won the right to implement it took the Albanian state to court due to the unilateral termination of the contract. By that moment, the company had completed 68 percent of the work foreseen in the contract with a value of 56 million euros.

After the case in the London Arbitration, the company would gain something that has a doubly negative effect for the Albanian state. On the one hand, the costs of maintaining a still unfinished plant have increased, while the obligation that must be paid along with the interests for the arbitration decision continues to increase.

"The termination of the contract for the implementation of works for the construction of ITUN Kashar and the improvement of the sewage system in the city of Tirana was assessed by the International Court of Arbitration (ICC) in London as unilateral and unlawful, reasoning that the financing agreement and the terms of the contract were violated, by assigning to the defendants MIE and AKUK an amount of approximately 13.5 million Euros. The financial costs until the maturity and full repayment of the obligations will also increase from the application of annual interest, calculated at the level of 3% of the discount rate of the relevant Bank on the amount of the principal of the outstanding obligation. The audit resulted that, until 30.04.2025, this decision has not been in the process of recognition/has not been recognized by the Court of Appeal, to take legal effect," the audit states.

The Kashar Wastewater Treatment Plant, still unfinished, is planned to perform a secondary treatment level (for a capacity of 350,000 pe) for the first phase and a tertiary final treatment level (for a capacity of 681,680. It was financed with a loan from the government of Japan./ Monitor