Successful Co-Operation Between Lek And The Lendava Municipality In Environmental Protection

20. 8. 2001

Lendava, 20 August 2001 – On 20 August, the Lendava Municipality Day, a solemn opening of the Lendava Wastewater Treatment Plant built through joint efforts of Lek Pharmaceutical Company and the Lendava Municipality, took place. The wastewater treatment plant is intended for the cleansing of municipal and industrial wastewaters in the Lendava region. By means of co-investments from the European Association ISPA, the Lendava Municipality will also build a sewage system.

At the opening ceremony, Lek d.d. was granted the ISO 14001 certificate for the environmental management system. An official speech was delivered by Janez Kopač, the Minister of Environment and Spatial Planning.

After the start-up of the Lendava Wastewater Treatment Plant, a future independent company founded by the Lendava Municipality and the company Lek, the pollution of the Ledava river, currently receiving an inflow of untreated municipal and partly industrial wastewaters of the majority of the Lendava region., will be significantly reduced, and so will the pollution of the Kopica brook.

The present capacity of the Lendava Wastewater Treatment Plant is 7,000 population units (PU) for the Lendava Municipality, and 22,000 PU for Lek. The construction of the Plant, however, allows for a final capacity of 45,000 PU.

The value of the buildings, technological equipment, installations and the operation control and supervision systems together with the infrastructural arrangement, access road and connections to municipal services amounts to SIT 950 millions. These resources are entirely contributed by Lek d.d. which also made a choice of the wastewater treatment technology, and will take proper care of the system functioning in conformity with the environmental protection regulations.

Metod Dragonja, the President of the Board of Management, also pointed out the following: “By erecting the currently most advanced and up-to-date wastewater treatment plant in Slovenia, the Lek company is manifesting a high level of enviromental awareness, realizing that it has to operate in harmony with its environment. This is a unique example of co-operation and partnership between the local community and industry in solving the issue of pollution and environment conservation in the Lendava region. The Lendava Plant is Lek’s contribution to a harmonious economic and social development of the broader Pomurje region."

Janez Kopač, the Minister of Environment and Spatial Planning, underlined the European Commission’s decision to co-finance the wastewater treatment programme for the Lendava region, based exclusively on the fact that the project also included private resources, as the Commission only supports the projects conceived on the basis of the partnership between the private and public sector, while highlighting the company Lek as one of the most enviromentally aware companies in Slovenia. Igor Likar, the Director of the Slovene Institute for Quality and Metrology, took the occasion to hand over the ISO 14001 certificate. The principle requirement of the ISO 14001 is to design the environmental management system in a way to enable constant improvements in the major environmental areas. Lek will, pursuant to the ISO certificate, endeavour to continually improve its attitude towards the environment, while fulfilling increasingly strict environmental requirements.