Assessment of the Water Quality from the Sitnica River as a Result of Urban Discharges

According to the Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning, Kosovo is facing problems related not only to the limited amount of water, but also when it comes to its quality, as a result of discharge of contaminated wastewater into the surface and groundwater, without any prior treatment. The longest river (90km) and at the same time the most polluted river in Kosovo is the Sitnica River. All the wastewater from the towns and villages washed by this river during its entire watercourse from its source until its mouth into the Ibar River is discharged into this river. In order to have a more accurate overview of the impact of urban discharge into the quality of the Sitnica River water and to assess the impact of the pollutants discharged into this river, we conducted a research at five monitoring stations: the first station representing a reference station not being subjected (untouched) to anthropogenic pollution pressure while the other four represent monitoring stations situated at water area affected by this discharge of urban wastewater. The purpose of this study is to assess the quality of the Sitnica River water and to analyze the pollution scale level throughout its course caused by urban discharge. Some of the parameters of the water qualityanalyzed are: temperature, turbidity, electrical conductivity, pH, DO, COD, BOD, P total, nitrates, detergents and ammonium ions.Analysis of the physical – chemical parameters of the water quality was conducted at the laboratory of the Hydro-meteorological Institute of Kosovo. Based on experimental results, various readings of the majority of the studied parameters were obtained at different stations with a tendency of deteriorated quality of water with the growing distance from the source of the Sitnica River, as a result of continuous impact of pollution. From our findings we can conclude that continuous discharge of urban wastewater has a considerable impact on the quality of the Sitnica River water.