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Romania's Polluted Waters:

Romania's waters are some of the most polluted in Europe. The major sources of this pollution are industrial waste, agricultural runoff (pesticides, fertilizers and animal waste) and municipal waste. While industrial waste may be the most serious (and least regulated) pollution source, it's effluent from agriculture that dumps the bulk of Romania's rivers' nitrogen and phosphate load. Out of the country's twelve longest rivers, seven empty into the Danube and eventually into the Black Sea, where the pollution carry has been affecting the sea's fragile ecosystems since the 1960's.

Even considering the largely unaccounted-for effects of industrial polluters and the devastating effects of raising crops and cattle, it is the third pollution source - municipal waste - that's the most concerning to me, especially as it is also the most preventable. Wastewater from residential and commercial buildings empties into Romania's rivers at a rate of 10 billion cubic meters per year, of which only 10 percent is adequately treated. Even where water treatment plants exist, "79 percent of water passes through them without experiencing major changes," says Nicoleta Ionescu, Coordinator of Environmental Projects for Louis Berger SAS - a company that has managed public infrastructure projects in Romania since 1991.

Bucharest, Romania's capital and largest municipality with over two million inhabitants, is also its biggest wastewater polluter. The astonishing fact is that, as of 2008, Bucharest still does not have a sewage treatment facility! Its untreated sewage drains, respectively, into the Dambovita, the Arges, the Danube and eventually into the Black Sea, via the ecologically sensitive Danube Delta (a UNESCO heritage site). In fact, though the Dambovita is a shallow river not more than 60 feet across, an alarming 80 percent of its volume downstream from Bucharest consists of pure, untreated sewage.

In order to help remedy this situation, in 2006 the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) loaned Romania 10 million to help finish building a wastewater treatment plant at Glina, a suburb of Bucharest. The project of building a treatment plant at Glina was begun in 1985 but sidelined after the '89 Revolution due to a lack of funding. Also in 2006, the European Investment Bank was set to lend 25 million to the project and the EU's ISPA Program to contribute 70 million in grants, for a joint investment of 105 million by the three organizations.

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