**Evolution of Water Quality in Romania**

Ioan Oroian and Antonia Odagiu

*University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Cluj – Napoca Romania* 

#### **1. Introduction**

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Globally, water is a renewable natural resource, but vulnerable and limited, so it must be treated as a natural heritage to be protected and defended. In our century, one of the largest global problems concerning water management, taking into account that the population of the planet is in continuous growing, is the crisis of drinking water. The structure of water resources is mainly represented by freshwater, which is a rather small percentage of total water on the planet, namely 2.5%, while the percentage of 70% constitutes the water on the surface of the Earth. The fresh water is directly accessible by springs, rivers, lakes, and ground water, the rest being found in glacial ice. It means that only 0.7% of the planet's water is available, as a source of survival for the current population (Dodds, 2002; http://www.anpm.ro/ Mediu/rapoarte, accessed 2011).

For these reasons, conservation, water saving and reuse, and not at least water quality are serious problems that concerns all states. In order to preserve water resources an maintain water quality at best standards by protecting water quality and quantity, states policies are elaborated in order to encourage the above mentioned desiderates by the application of economic stimuli, and by imposing penalties for those wastes or pollute the water (Meybeck, 2004).

Concerning Romania's case, the authorities confront with the same concerns regarding water quality as all other states, water quality being affected by a wide range of natural and human influences. If human influences concern the result of economical and domestic activities, the natural influences are geological, hydrological, and climatic (Wake, 2005; Shirodkar et al., 2009; Bulut et al., 2010; Odagiu, 2010; Odagiu et al., 2010). The Romanian particularities in the field are conferred by national geographical and economical specific. In this respect, we have to mention that because of the climate changes, especially in recent years, leading to increased drought phenomena, must be taken in view the need to manage water resources in a special manner in order to preserve this resource for future generations (Dodds, 2002; Blenckner, 2005; http://www.anpm.ro/ Mediu/rapoarte, accessed 2011). Another aspect, which must be taken into consideration, is that both economical and social realities recorded in last decade, imposed a better understanding of water quality evolution at national level, in order to find useful solutions for prediction models and reducing pollutants inputs of a large variety of sources (industry, agriculture, etc.).

Water resources of Romania are made up of surface water - rivers, lakes, river Danube (~ 90%) -, and groundwater (~ 10%). The main water resource of Romania is the inland

Evolution of Water Quality in Romania 135

Usually, monitoring the quality of water resources at national level cannot be performed by the measurement of only one parameter, because of many reasons. The water quality indices are variable in time and space, and this needs complex monitoring activity involving the measurement of a series of chemical physical and biological parameters according to special patterns, which are changing over time function of external conditions. Some of the above mentioned indicators provide general information concerning water pollution, whereas

The data concerning the main water pollutants were collected from annual reports elaborated by regional authorities and from public data delivered by the reports of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, and annual environmental reports of the National

Basic statistics, correlation and multivariate calculations were carried out in order to give initial information about the water quality data. Calculation of means, Pearson correlations, and multiple correlations were performed using STATISTICA 7.0 software for Windows. The calculation of Pearson correlation coefficients were performed in order to evaluate the correlations between the levels of variables (water virtual pollutants within surface water, groundwater and wastewater), and multiple regression analysis was conducted in order to evaluate the interrelation between chemical pollutants from surface water, groundwater and wastewater, and predict their future evolution. All tests of significance and correlations were considered statistically significant at P values of < 0.05, < 0.01, and < 0.001 (Blenckner,

During the period of five years that concerns the data collection, processing and analyze, the management of water quality in Romania was conducted and practiced, by authorities, according to requirements of the following EU directives: 60/2000/CEE, 75/440/EEC, 76/464/EEC, 91/676/EEC, 78/659/EEC, and 91/271/EEC, adopted and/or transposed in Romanian legislation (Oroian&Petrescu-Mag, 2011). They concern usual physical, chemical

The main water pollutants identified during the period of 5 years and all water categories (surface water, groundwater and wastewater) were: nitrogen compounds, chlorine, Fe, P,

The summary of the quality of surface waters by 2005 (Fig. 1a) was the result of processing the raw data deriving from the physico-chemical analyses of water sampled from 825 monitoring flowing water sections and 97 lakes (http://www.anpm.ro/Mediu/rapoarte, 2005,accessed 2011), and performed in accredited laboratories. It was distributed as follows: 31.40% Ist quality water, 46.10% IInd quality water, 15.80% IIIrd quality water, 3.70% IVth

From the point of view of monitoring activities developed at large national scale, the main components of the surface water are the flowing water (rivers) and lakes (Mihăiescu et al.,

others enable the direct tracking of water pollution sources.

2005; Sojka et al., 2008; Kazi et al., 2009; Papaioannou et al., 2010).

Fe, Mn, Cu, Cd, Zn, pesticides, oil products and detergents.

Agency of Environmental Protection.

and ecological water indicators.

**4. The quality of surface waters** 

quality water, and 3.10% Vth quality water.

**2. Data collection** 

**3. Statistics** 

rivers. Theoretically speaking, total water resource in Romania was in 2009 of 136,600,000 thousand m3 while that existing, according to the degree of development of river basin, is 40,482,841 thousand m3 under the terms of a national requirement of 12,265,698 thousand m3 (http://www.anpm.ro/ Mediu/rapoarte, accessed 2011). Taking into account only the contribution of inland rivers, from this point of view our country may be included in the category of countries with relatively low water resources in relation to the resources of other countries.

Generally speaking, monitoring water quality represents the activity of observations and standardized measurements and continues long-term awareness and evaluation of the parameters characteristic of water for household chores and defining the status and trend of the evolution of their quality, as well as permanent highlighting condition of water resources (Hirsch et al., 2009; Goyal et al., 2010; Odagiu, 2010).

In Romania, the quality of water is monitored according to the structure and the methodological principles of Integrated Monitoring System of Wastewater in Romania (S.M.I.A.R.), restructured in accordance with the requirements of European Directives. The inventory of the water pollutants is performed at regional level, based on the information delivered by the inventoried economical operators and statistical data collected and processed by regional competent authorities. The national system for monitoring water comprises two types of monitoring, in accordance with legislative requirements in the area: monitoring of supervisors having the role of assessing the status of all bodies of water in the river basin and operational monitoring (integrated monitoring displays) for bodies of water which have a risk not to fulfil the objectives of water protection (Oroian&Petrescu–Mag, 2011; http://www.anpm.ro/ Mediu/rapoarte, accessed 2011).

For the evaluation of chemical water quality overall, in each section, were calculated for each indicator, mean values, and these were compared with the limit values of the quality classes set by norm with five quality categories, resulting employment in one of the five quality categories. The indicators included in the Order of the Ministry of the Environment and Forests no. 161/2006 approving the Norms on the classification of the quality of surface waters in order to establish the ecological status of water bodies, were divided into five main groups (Oroian&Petrescu–Mag, 2011; http://www.anpm.ro/ Mediu/rapoarte, accessed 2011):


Emphasizing the evolution of surface water, wastewater and ground water quality in Romania for the period of 5 years between 2005 and 2009, and testing the multiregression analyze model in order to predict this evolution, are the main objectives of our study.
