III. History of the Problem

There are two organizations that were created to help work towards and maintain healthy life in the Danube River Basin.  The International Association for Danube Research was founded in 1956, and it organizes and fulfills tasks that lead toward an integrative water and river basin management that the European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD) requested. The International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) was formed in 1998 and is comprised of an expert panel that is responsible for preparing documents for national governments to agree upon (Bloesch, 2009).  The ICPDR is responsible for coordinating and implementing the WFD in the Danube river basin district.  The WFD came into force on December 22, 2000 and brought major changes in water management practices (Ostfeld and Tyson, 2005).

Starting in the 1960s, nitrogen and phosphorus levels from agriculture, municipal and industrial sources started to seriously degrade the Black Sea ecosystem, disrupt fisheries, reduce biodiversity, pose threats to humans and result in billions of dollars of losses to the economies of the six Black Sea littoral countries.  Nutrient and toxic pollution from the 18 countries comprising the Danube River Basin, which flows into the Black Sea, created many of these threats to water quality in the region (Chaitovitz, 2010).  The Lower Danube in the east has a greater pollution problem than the Upper Danube in the west (Bloesch, 2009).

“The problem accumulated over many decades,” says DRP Environmental Specialist Peter Whalley. Environmental management was not the main concern of large state farms during communism.  A “good farm” was considered one that had lots of livestock, and to enhance production many fertilizers and pesticides were used (Csagoly, 2007). These threats were at their highest in the 1980's when nutrient loads peaked causing eutrophication and sweeping anoxic zones along coastal areas. In the 1990's signs of recovery began to emerge because of political changes and nutrient removal in wastewater treatment plants (ICDPR).  When communism ended, many of the areas surrounding the river suffered economic loss particularly in agriculture where loss and funds were depleted. Because of this, pesticide use declined by 40% and the amount of livestock when down by 50%.  Many of the post-communist European countries are reviving and the countries amounts of nutrient load into the river are rebounding.  This could mean more nutrient based pollution in the Danube because environmental management is a low priority for most farmers (Csagoly, 2007).

Nitrogen-containing nutrients such as ammonium is one of the most pressing issues in the Danube. Half of all samples across the length of the Danube exceed targeted safety levels. The rises in ammonium levels are due to insufficient or untreated wastewater. Phosphorus is another nutrient that is highly affecting the river by heightening the affects of eutrophication. The phosphorus is coming from erosion of fertilized farmland as well as wastewater. Industrial and household chemicals are transferred into the water.  Before the 1980’s, laundry detergents contained poly-phosphates and these accounted for around half of the phosphorus load in the river. Instead of fixing the problem in the river, which would have been very costly, laundry detergents were made phosphate free at no additional cost to the consumer (ICPDR). 

Little is known about the long term impacts that most hazardous substances have on the Danube River but even after levels going into the river have decreased problems are still persistent because the substances are bio accumulating. As with nitrogen testing in the river, around half of all samples that were taken for lead, copper and cadmium exceeded target levels in the Danube.  The river is regularly analyzed for eight heavy metals. Although there is not much data available for pesticides, DDT is of special concern in the lower Danube area. The overall quality of the river ranges from Class II (moderate pollution) to Class II-III (moderate to critical pollution) (ICPDR).

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