Sustainable supply of drinking water

The youngest state in Europe, the Repub­lic of Koso­vo, with approx. 1.9 mil­lion inhab­i­tants, counts among the poor­est of the Balkan states. Many of the drink­ing water sys­tems are over 30 years old and have been severe­ly dam­aged and neglect­ed dur­ing the past polit­i­cal unrest. There­fore, the Swiss Gov­ern­ment, rep­re­sent­ed by the SDC (Swiss Agency for Devel­op­ment and Coop­er­a­tion), com­mis­sioned the work­ing group CDI (Com­mu­ni­ty Devel­op­ment Ini­tia­tives) and the Dorsch Gruppe, as an inde­pen­dent plan­ning and engi­neer­ing office, to ensure the gen­er­al over­haul­ing and improve­ment of the water sup­ply and the waste­water sys­tems. This large — scale project has entered the final phase, and it will be con­clud­ed in Decem­ber 2020.
Since 2000, the Swiss Coop­er­a­tion Office in Koso­vo has been invest­ing in the water sec­tor, sup­port­ing the devel­op­ment and growth of water sup­ply com­pa­nies and, at the same time, ensur­ing that rur­al com­mu­ni­ties are sup­plied with clean water. This enabled Koso­vo to achieve over 80% of their Mil­len­ni­um Devel­op­ment Goals by Decem­ber last year. The coun­try is also well on the way to reach­ing the UN sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals in terms of water. Since 2000, the project has suc­cess­ful­ly con­nect­ed over 600,000 house­holds to the pub­lic drink­ing water sup­ply grid. This large — scale project was divid­ed into six phas­es; the cur­rent – and final – Phase VI serves as the “exit phase”, which aims to sup­port all sev­en of the coun­try’s water sup­ply com­pa­nies by boost­ing their capac­i­ty. Dur­ing the ear­li­er phas­es, the focus was on build­ing up the infra­struc­ture; now the main focus is on enabling the water sup­ply com­pa­nies to work suc­cess­ful­ly over the long term. The staff is being trained on site by means of train­ing ses­sions and shar­ing best prac­tice with­in the frame­work of pilot projects. Get­ting the remain­ing rur­al areas con­nect­ed to the drink­ing water sup­ply grid is also part of the focus. Added to this is the des­ig­na­tion of water con­ser­va­tion areas, to pro­tect cer­tain areas from dan­ger­ous influ­ences (e.g. pol­lu­tion) and to reduce ener­gy con­sump­tion and loss of water, e.g. through leaks in the pipelines.

Hand in hand for a sustainable supply of drinking water

The water sup­ply com­pa­nies are respon­si­ble for oper­at­ing and main­tain­ing the water sup­ply and waste­water sys­tems. Often, how­ev­er, there is not suf­fi­cient qual­i­fied per­son­nel on site, and there are not ade­quate finan­cial resources to keep the local sys­tems in long-term oper­a­tion. Pilot projects on the spot help the water sup­ply com­pa­nies to deal with these them­selves, for exam­ple by imple­ment­ing joint pro­grammes for the reduc­tion of water loss­es, plan­ning reha­bil­i­ta­tion mea­sures or imple­ment­ing joint­ly devel­oped oper­a­tion and main­te­nance plans. Two water con­ser­va­tion areas were cho­sen and des­ig­nat­ed accord­ing­ly: before the close of the project, three more con­ser­va­tion areas will fol­low. In 23 pilot areas, water loss­es are being reduced through coop­er­a­tion, is it by replac­ing derelict pipelines or intro­duc­ing more effi­cient admin­is­tra­tion. In two addi­tion­al regions, plans are being made for how ener­gy loss­es could be reduced by over 5%, through com­pre­hen­sive measures.