Jasmina Hadzic, Communications Assistant in the Bosnia and Herzegovina World Bank Office, offers this story.

The summer of 2011 ended abruptly in Sarajevo in September as clouds moved in and torrents of cold rain fell on the city. Many were sad to see summer leave but were pleased that the rain rid the capital of the smell of untreated sewage.

As the Miljacka River runs through Sarajevo, it is murky with trash and untreated wastewater. There is a water treatment plant upstream, built for the 1984 Olympics, but it has not worked since it was badly damaged in the war that wracked Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. Most wastewater treatment plants in the country are in equally bad shape and need to be rehabilitated.

One already is. Trnovo’s plant treats wastewater from over 2,000 households in this small mountain community, and discharges clean water back into the Zeljeznica. Rehabilitated through an $8.9 million Water Quality Projection Project administered by the World Bank, Trnovo’s plant has been a relief for the local population.

Angelina Vasic

Angelina Vasic, Trnovo resident, remembers the state of her back yard before the rehabilitation of the wastewater plant. “It was a disaster. Garbage, bushes, dirt, and raw sewage would spill out, especially when it rained! We were so happy when we saw that rehabilitation works were underway.”

One aim of the water quality project is to strengthen the capacity of local utilities to reduce municipal pollution in rivers. Another larger aim is to reduce pollution in the Adriatic Sea and Danube basin, into which waters from Bosnia and Herzegovina’s major rivers flow.

Trnovo’s plant is small, but its rehabilitation fulfills both aims of the project. Trnovo is helping to keep the river clean, which will flow downstream from here into Sarajevo’s underground water field – sometimes used for drinking water.

Nermin Drnda

“Wastewater treatment is very important for the protection of the quality of surface waters directly, and indirectly to protect the quality of underground water used in the water supply system,” emphasized Nermin Drnda, Acting Executive Director for Sarajevo Canton’s sewage treatment.

And as the river that runs through Trnovo eventually drains into the Danube and further into the Black Sea, reducing wastewater here also reduces the growth of nutrients far downstream.

Besides Trnovo, three other wastewater treatment plants are being rehabilitated or constructed.

A separate World Bank project is supporting the rehabilitation of Sarajevo’s main wastewater treatment plant. Rehabilitation is expected to start in 2012. Once completed, the plant will treat one-third of the country’s wastewater, including that of the capital. Sarajevo’s residents will no longer have to endure the sight or the smell of sewage in the summer.