Even with the building of several Sewage Treatment Plants in the country, most of the wastewater that is created is dumped unfiltered in our rivers, lakes, reservoirs and underground water. The data provided by the State Statistical Office show that 72.2% of the total quantities of wastewater is poured into underground and ground waters.
In 2018, 80 million square meters of unfiltered wastewater was poured into in our rivers, lakes and underground waters. The total quantity of wastewater created in 2018 is by 2.6% less than 2017. The total quantity of unfiltered wastewater in 2018 has decreased by 10.6% compared to the previous year. In 2018, a surge of filtered wastewater was noticed,which have reached up to 30,783,000 square meters.
This increase of 32.2% of the treatment of wastewater before being released into the rivers and lakes is a result of putting into use the new sewage treatment plants for wastewater in Kichevo and Prilep in 2018, and in Strumica, at the end of 2017.
The largest quantity of the unfiltered wastewater is being poured into our rivers. Over 46 million square meters of wastewater was dumped into the rivers during 2018 which mostly contributes to the lowest quality of the water in our rivers. So, there are strict prohibitions for fishing for food, swimming and watering agricultural plants with water from some of the rivers such as: Vardar, Treska, and Lepenec in the Skopje region. Almost 34 million square meters of wastewater was dumped into the underground waters, which can contribute to endangering some of the drinking water wells.
