15 September 2008 | The most polluted zones of the Danube River are between Budapest and Belgrade and the tributaries Arges in Romania and Rusenski Lom in Bulgaria, according to results of the scientific Joint Danube Survey 2 (JDS2), recently announced by the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR).

One-third of the over 100 sites tested “were affected by microbial contamination […]. Identified hotspots were the Danube stretch between Budapest and Belgrade and the tributaries Arges and Rusenski Lom.”

The latter, along with the tributaries Sio, Jantra “had noticeable organic pollution problems,” the JDS2 wrote, “while the Arges River is excessively polluted – it has no macroinvertebrate specimens at all.”

In addition, the survey noted that the “efforts to establish waste water treatment plants in the basin, particularly in cities such as Budapest, Belgrade and Bucharest, need to be accelerated.”

Although the study – resulting from “possibly the world’s biggest river research expedition ever,” found some contaminated areas and concluded that pollution of the river still remains high, it also established that overall it “has declined, mainly because of the drop in industry and agriculture in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) following political transformations in the late 1980s.”

The main goal of the JDS2 was to produce highly comparable and reliable information on water quality and pollution for the entire Danube River and many of its tributaries.

Officially launched on August 14, 2007, in Regensburg, Germany, it assessed a total distance of 2,600 kilometres of the Danube River travelling from Kelheim, Germany, through 10 countries, to the Danube Delta in Romania and Ukraine until September of 2008.

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