MICROBIAL POLLUTION ASSESSMENT OF ALBANIAN LITTORAL WATERS IN OHRID LAKE

Lake Ohrid, straddles the mountainous border between south-western Macedonia and eastern Albania. It is one of Europe's deepest and oldest lakes, preserving a unique aquatic ecosystem that is of worldwide importance, with more than 200 endemic species. Lakes are divided into subsections based on morphometric (depth, dimension, geology of shores, currents, etc.) and physicochemical (temperature, pH, oxygen content) parameters. Apart from their bacterial and algal populations, stream, rivers, and lakes also contain fungal, protozoan, and viral populations, which interact and contribute to the functioning of the food web. This paper presents pollution aspects of Lake Ohrid at Pogradec. Out of large number of microbial parameters linked with human health, some significant contaminating indicators, namely, total Coli form (MPN/100ml), Fecal coliform (MPN/100ml), Streptococcus feacalis (MPN/100ml) have been identified and measured. Eight sampling locations were selected, three of them in Pogradec city area, (three different bands in each sampling locations) and total of samples sets were collected over a period of three months from June to September. The results taken by the analyses show that the bacterial pollution of the littoral waters of Lake Ohrid, surpasses the UNEP/WHO standards for the microbiological quality of bathing waters (100-1000 E.coli/100ml) in most of the sampling locations.