Tools for Water Quality Monitoring and Emission Analysis

Final Reports - Phase 1
Final Reports - Phase 2

The project is supporting the Danube countries in developing, upgrade and reinforce capacities of tools for emission control and monitoring of water quality, laboratory and information management. The models and applications supported mostly with data from the ICPDR Trans-National Monitoring Networks (TNMN) and Emission Inventory are essential tools for assessment of environmental stress and impact, in particular transboundary nutrient and toxic pollutant flows as well as an assessment of the expected effects of nutrient and other pollution reduction measures.

This project component uses the results of the Joint Danube Survey (JDS 2001-2002) that provided comparable biological and chemical characteristic data along the Danube in the main river bed and in the major tributaries, as well as the appropriate data and information necessary for the ecological and chemical surface water status characterization in line with the WFD.

Both water quality assessment and emission control (assessment of pressures/programme of measures) are key issues in implementation of the EU WFD, which is a high priority of the ICPDR. In line with the Work Programmes of ICPDR expert groups responsible for water quality (MLIM EG) and emission control (EMIS EG), the following major issues are addressed:

• Development of water quality objectives for nutrients and water quality standards for toxic substances from DRPC list of priority substances, in line with the EU WFD;
• Improvement of the scope of the TNMN and Emission Inventory, including harmonization of their databases, considering EU and ICPDR Lists of Priority Substances. TNMN related activities included the analysis and assessment of TNMN results, development of SOPs and upgrade of web-based databases.
• Development of application for pressure /stress (emissions) and impact (water quality/change in ecosystems) analysis, based on MLIM and EMIS databases (TNMN, JDS, EMIS Inventory) including analysis and comparison of data in these databases;

In the first phase extensive analyses were carried out on environmental quality objectives and standards for nutrients and other Danube specific priority substances and on the results of the EMIS inventory and their comparison with TNMN and JDS results with particular attention to the EU Priority List of Pollutants.

Concepts and proposals have been developed that will be implemented in the Phase 2, in particular related to TNMN upgrade and SOPs for new determinands.