Just a few meters behind a large construction site in Tepelena, one of the towns in southern Albania through which the Vjosa River flows, stands a mountain of garbage. The area has long been used as a garbage dump.
In 2023, the Albanian government declared the Vjosa – one of the last truly wild rivers in Europe – a national park, the only wild river national park in Europe.
Near the landfill, a new "multifunctional" visitor center is being built, a project approved by Prime Minister Edi Rama.
“The multifunctional center will serve as the heart of the project, offering … educational exhibits and spaces for community engagement. Its design will prioritize accessibility and sustainability, transforming a degraded space into a vibrant cultural community,” the project plan states optimistically.
Meanwhile, the local municipality still uses the surrounding area as a garbage dump, despite the river's special status, which is supposed to guarantee its protection.
“The landfill is really a shocking sight, because it’s just an unmanaged place. The waste is scattered everywhere, the wind carries the waste and plastic into the river,” Leonard Sonten, a marine biology expert from the German organization EuroNatur, told BIRN. “There are chemicals flowing into the river and animals consuming the waste,” he stressed.
Sonten considers the continued pollution of a river that has been declared a national park and the use of the area as a garbage dump unacceptable.
"They are building the new visitor center right next to the landfill, which may be a good thing in the end because it can no longer be tolerated – because it is so visible to national park visitors – but I hope they do something about it sooner rather than later, because this is unacceptable for a national park," he added.
Waste is dumped into the river.
The Vjosa River flows for about 272 kilometers through Albania and the other 80 kilometers flow through Greece.
Albania declared its part a national park in March 2023, after more than 10 years of campaigning by local and environmental activists and scientists.
But, two and a half years after this decision, no serious efforts are being made to keep it clean and protect it from industrial and human interference.
Olsi Nika, one of the activists who has advocated for the protection of Vjosa for years and who in May won the Goldman Prize, a prestigious award in the environmental world, told BIRN that “declaring Vjosa a national park was not the last chapter of history.”
“Two and a half years after the declaration of the Vjosa National Park, this is being promoted as a very big achievement. But we have identified a number of other problems, such as the extraction of inert materials and water, urban solid waste and plastics,” Nika told BIRN.
He added that if the government does not take any action to protect the Vjosa, the wild river risks becoming a "park only on paper."
"Everyone's contribution is needed to manage it effectively and become a model of nature conservation success," Nika added.
The government's plan for the management of the Vjosa National Park 2024-2033 recognizes several threats to the river and its biodiversity from pollution.
"The Vjosa River and its tributaries are used for the disposal of some unfiltered waste. Unfiltered wastewater from villages, settlements and individual buildings flows into the river," he notes.
“In addition, several industrial areas along the river discharge their wastewater, as well as by-products of the production process into the river (e.g. bitumen production, oil industry),” he adds.
“Continuous pressure from extractive industries”
The Vjosa River is a vital habitat for over 1,100 species, including 13 globally endangered species.
But this summer, it was significantly impacted by an oil spill in the river, which damaged its biodiversity.
BIRN witnessed this pollution, with oil clearly present in the water and the surrounding area.
In a joint press statement in July, local environmental organization EcoAlbania and its international partners EuroNatur and Riverwatch raised the alarm that the river was under threat.
"The Vjosa River is facing continued pressure from extractive industries, infrastructure expansion and uncontrolled development, putting the ecological integrity of the park and its global value for nature conservation at risk," the groups wrote in the statement.
According to the organizations EuroNatur and EcoAlbania, there are five main threats to the water and biodiversity of the Vjosa: oil extraction, which affects not only the water but also the surrounding biodiversity; bitumen extraction and processing, which discharges dredged materials into the river, often containing heavy metals; water abstraction, which includes its diversion for irrigation and urban supply; and industrial use.
"For a free-flowing river, water abstraction is the biggest threat, especially for a wild river national park. This is definitely unacceptable for such a river," Nika said.
Other threats include gravel extraction and urban waste, as well as wastewater from urban and rural areas flowing into the river without treatment.
When the Vjosa was declared a national park, its three branches – Shushica, Drino and Bënça – were included in the protected area.
But the Shushica, one of the main branches, about 76 kilometers long, currently faces another threat: the diversion of water from its source towards the Municipality of Himara, a project by the Austrian company Strabag, which plans to take this water to coastal resorts.
Besjana Guri, head of the local environmental organization “Lumi”, dedicated to rivers, the environment and their integrity, says that “taking water from the Shushica spring … does not only affect its source, but the entire course of the river.”
“It is one of the main sources of the river and, considering that the river dried up almost completely in the lower part during the summer, imagine what will happen once this additional water is taken away,” she told BIRN.
"We will also have a serious drought in the middle reaches of the river and a reduction in flows near its source," she added.
She fears that both the Shushica branch and the entire Vjosa River could suffer consequences.
"The entire integrity of the river will be affected by this project, because we are dealing with a reduction in the amount of water; this will affect the species that live there – if there is not enough water, they will no longer have a habitat to survive," she warned. /BIRN/
