Danube River is Most Polluted Around its Tributaries in Bulgaria and Romania
BalkanTravellers.com
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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A Perfect Shot
In Homo Urbanus Europeanus, exhibited May 9-24 in front of the National Theatre in Sofia, Jean-Marc Caracci presents his photographs of people in the urban environment of European capitals.
RED&WHITE SOFIA. On the 1st of March Bulgarians say goodbye to the winter. They buy each other red&white threads to carry around until they see a stork and spring can begin. Photography by Lode Desmet
BULGARIA D'OR: The Bulgarian countryside, patinated with the noble golden dust of the autumn. Photographs by Lode Desmet
360 degrees Bulgaria, an exhibition by photographer Alexandar Ivanov, is on display at the Sea Garden in Varna until August 28. It will be shown at Plovdiv’s Central Square from Sept 5.
The exhibition Photographs of a Trip Through Bulgaria by Hungarian photographer András Balla can be seen in Sofia's Hungarian Cultural Institute, at Aksakov 16 Street, until August 22
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Bulgaria's Northern Black Sea Coast
Photographs by Albena Shkodrova
excellent smugs