Abandoned Wastewater Treatment Facilities

Construction of this wastewater treatment complex began in 2014 and was supposed to take thirty months. The plant was a gift to the Albanian capital from Japan. But as soon as the Japanese engineers left the site, the money abruptly ran out and construction came to a halt.

By then the complex was already well advanced. Besides the grounds with their settling tanks, a large-diameter underground sewer collector had been built — a tunnel several hundred metres long, to which the city’s wastewater network was meant to be connected. The tunnelling equipment still lies dumped across the site, and security keeps watch over it and over the grounds. The Albanian capital, meanwhile, was left without a treatment plant: its sewage still flows straight into the city’s two rivers.