Enough problems and thus potential friction do exist in this town severely shaken by the fall of communism and the Balkan wars - particularly in the fields of water/wastewater and flood protection. A feasibility study compiled by the beginning of the 90s by other domestic experts showed the following sad picture: the city of Shkodra with its 110,000 inhabitants is in about the same situation as many an Austrian town shortly after the end of WWII.

However, the administration is in a much worse condition. People are hardly used to manage their affairs by themselves. The water supply network resembles a sieve, due to the flat fee for water, the precious element is extremely carelessly handled; power supply only works for a couple of hours a day. All things considered, an investment of between 43.6 EURO and 58 million EURO would be needed to upgrade water supply to a European standard according to the authors of the study!

At the beginning of the project in 2000 the Rohrhofer civil engineering office for land management and water engineering (GWCC) had a mere 1.45 million EURO for the improvement of water supply and about 0.73 million EURO of investments for the wastewater sector/"flood protection" at its disposal, the latter with a call for action unknown to that date. Rohrhofer: "Shkodra is not only situated at the lake of the same name, but is also afflicted by heavy rainfalls at certain times of the year. Due to discharge possibilities for precipitation lacking so far, the badly maintained main shopping boulevard was regularly flooded at a length of 1.5 km."

This problem had remained unknown to both the authors of the study and experts from other donor countries. The GWCC team discovered this fact (and a number of others, too) by means of a simple, but highly effective method that others had not thought of before.

They got together with the people - the mayor, the manager of the waterworks, the wastewater treatment director and a restaurant owner - and asked them for the most urgent problems and finally asked them the decisive question: "What do you expect from us Austrians with regard to local water supply and the wastewater/flood problem?" The answer was surprisingly unisonous, even for old hand Rohrhofer: "We expect that when the Austrians will have finished their job, we will notice that they have been here!"

The next steps according to the feasibility study were therefore clear. The GWCC boss: "In view of the given framework conditions a graduated scheme seemed to be the only appropriate way and particularly helped avoiding the call for 'high-tech' by our Albanian partners."

This seemed only logical, for a high-tech approach would have helped only a very small part of the city; the objective of "noticeability" would not have been reached. In addition, European high technology requires a number of basic prerequisites ? e.g. reliable power supply as well as an appropriate know-how in the field of maintenance ? which both are not provided for in Shokdra.

Therefore, the people there had to be patiently convinced; at the same time Albanian attempts of playing the European donor nations off against each other had to be countered. After a second brief survey of the situation, the GWCC finally submitted its offer. Karl Rohrhofer: "As far as water quality is concerned, Shkodra is in a very good situation due to its vicinity to the mountains of the Skipetars. The water, which is neither polluted by industrial effluents nor by residues of fertilisers, runs via groundwater streams toward the city and forms several groundwater tables. Therefore, eleven wells were built already during the communist period, and the water was pumped to an elevated tank on a hill in the south of the city."

However, when the Austrians started working, this system only supplied a mere 60 l/sec. to the elevated tank instead of the former 200 l/sec.

Further 500 l/sec. had to be fed directly to the city via pressure pipes. Due to the high leakage loss, however, no pressure could be built up in the system and therefore, most tenants helped themselves with Gardena pumps sucking the precious wet element from the pipes to their apartments.

Therefore, according to Rohrhofer, the call for a high-tech remediation of the old system had to be strongly opposed. He fully relied on affordable lean technology instead: "We offered to increase the available water amount by 300 to 400 l/sec., i.e. to bring more water to the citizens and to build a new pumping station for this purpose."

The approach was clear: forget the search for leaks and the installation of water meters and operate the system with an increased amount of water as long as the supply system is not remediated. And only as soon as the population earns enough to pay and to be willing to pay appropriate water fees (today about cent 50 per month) can new plans be implemented. The results proved that the Austrian experts were right! Asking how the citizens felt about water supply now, Karl Rohrhofer only met with happy faces on the occasion of a recent visit on the premises. Given that power supply is functioning, there is no citizen in Shkodra who doesn?t have water for 24 hours a day at least up to the first floor!

And there are also positive reports on Shkodra?s Fifth Avenue. After the insertion of two concrete profiles using a proven concrete technology dating back to "Austria in 1925", the stormwater now flows underground to the lake; at the same time the boulevard was properly asphalted for the first time! The Austrian investments went into operation in September 2001.

In addition to the on-going "institutional strengthening" by which the Albanian experts should mainly get a new self-conception for their future tasks, the population has to become familiar with saving water and paying fees - in a phase of the project of the BmaA lasting until 2003. In this context the GWCC manager is relying - in addition to a large-scale media campaign - on the "water booklet", an Austrian instrument of the old days and on the establishing of a somewhat modern fee and dunning system.

"Our aim is to cut the per-head consumption by half and to double the willingness to pay at medium term," says Rohrhofer enthusiastically. In the long run the GWCC experts will propose a cooperation company according to the model of Ernsthofen to the city fathers of Shkodra, a two-step management model, which the World Bank also seems to favour now for CEE countries.

In principle, however, the donor countries will need to find a common strategy and at the same time they will need to abandon the strategy to answer any call for help coming from the CEE countries with non-affordable and maintainable high technology. (Source: aqua press Int. 2/2002)

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