New project to be prepared for waste water treatment plant in Dimitrovgrad – Tender for contractors might be opened by end-2025

The impossibility of moving the international power line and the planned capacity which is too big for the current needs of Dimitrovgrad are the reasons why the project of the waste water treatment plant is to be abandoned and why a new one is to be prepared. The president of the municipality, Vladica Dimitrov, said so for FAR. He expects that the tender for the contractor might be opened by the end of next year.

In 1990, Dimitrovgrad was the first municipality in Serbia and, along with Tolmin in Slovenia, among the first in Yugoslavia to get a waste water treatment plant, but that collector is not operational now. In 2018, a project for a new one was in preparation, but no works have been done so far, so the citizens of Dimitrovgrad will have to wait some more for the new collector, so that the waste waters would not be directly poured into the river Nisava.

Dimitrov said that the project would have to be changed or a new one would have to be prepared.

– The technology of those bacteria, the biological system of treatment is still current and that’s how it would be done. According to the new project, everything is inside reservoirs, so that the unpleasant smell would not spread through the environment. However, at the autumn session of the Assembly, we will probably have to abandon this project. Since the time it was created, we have had a problem with it – said the president of the municipality.

Dimitrov explained what the reasons were.

– They weren’t thinking when they were designing this facility, because one column of the international power line is located in the facility itself. We have spent a few years trying to move that power line, but we have realized that it’s no use. Another problem is the capacity, because it is designed for 15,000 users. According to the most recent census, Dimitrovgrad has 8,000 residents. Even if they all lived here, and they don’t, it’s still a half of what is planned. A big problem with biological treatment plants is the lack of the matter. The bacteria have to feed on organic waste, and if there is none, or the inflow of the stormwater sewage is bigger, it loses its purpose – Dimitrovgrad said.

He added that there was still money for the project at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, that it would most probably be decided at the autumn session to start a new design, so that the process would be finished in 2025 and so that a permit would be obtained at the end of that year from the ministry for the opening of the tender.

Opština Dimitrovgrad

Ministarstvo zaštite životne sredine Republike Srbije

Municipality of Dimitrovgrad

Ministry of Environmental Protection

Vladica Dimitrov

waste water treatment plant