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Danube
The Danube is the second longest river in Europe behind the Volga and the only major European river to flow from West to East. It takes its source in the Black Forest Mountains of Germany, and empties after 2850 km (1770 mi) in the Black Sea on the Romanian coast. Along its way, the Danube flows through nine countries (Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Ukraine) and drains an area slightly larger than 817,000 km 2 (315,000 sq mi) over more than a dozen countries. The river is navigable by ocean vessels to Braila, Romania, and by river craft up to Ulm, Germany. About 60 of its 300 tributaries are navigable as well; the principal ones are Inn, Morava, Drava, Tisza, Sava, and Prut. Among the important cities on the river, three are national capitals: Vienna (Austria), Budapest (Hungary), and Belgrade (Serbia).
Historical Data
The Danube has always been an important route between Western Europe and the Black Sea. In the 3 rd century it served as the northern boundary of the Roman Empire, and fortresses built on its banks constituted the main line of defense of the Romans against Goths, Huns, and Slavs invasions. The Roman strongholds along its shores were settlements that later became Vienna (formerly Vindobona), Budapest (formerly Aquincum), Belgrade (formerly Singidunum) among others. In the Middle Ages, the Danube eased the advancement of the Ottomans into western and central Europe.
The Danube began to serve as a commercial link between nations in the 18 th century. Maria Theresa, queen of Hungary from the Habsburg dynasty, founded a department that would regulate river navigation. It is said that the first trip of a riverboat for trading purposes took place in 1830 from Vienna to Budapest. In the 19 th century the Danube became an essential industrial route between the West (especially Germany) and the agricultural areas of the Balkan Peninsula. The Treaty of Paris (1856) and the Treaty of Versailles (1919) promoted free navigation along the entire river and established a European Commission that would control the delta and supervise the river as an international waterway. After World War II, a new Danubian Convention was signed, providing for the Danubian countries alone to participate in the supervising commission.
Economic Importance
The waters of the Danube have served as a vital commercial highway between nations for centuries. The river is of great economic importance to the nine countries that border it. They use the river in various ways. Freight transport, hydroelectricity, water supplies, irrigation, and fishing are all found on the Danube.
The most important use of the Danube is the movement of freight. The major ports include all the cities mentioned earlier. Industrial supplies as well as agricultural products are brought from the Balkans to the inner lands or downstream from Germany to the Black Sea. In the second half of the 20 th century navigation has been improved. In some places the river bed has been enlarged and deepened, but more importantly, the construction of a series of canals along the Danube has helped river traffic increase considerably. The two major canals are the Danube-Black Sea Canal and the Main-Danube Canal. The first is a Romanian project; it is a 64 km canal that was completed in 1984 with the purpose of shortening the route to the Black Sea by 370 km. It provides a more direct and navigable link to the Sea. The Main-Danube Canal is perhaps the most important one. It was opened in 1992 to link the Danube to the Rhine, consequently providing a commercial route between the Black and North seas. This was a great idea as it cut the link from the North Sea to the Black and Mediterranean seas tremendously.
The Danube is also used for power resources. Several countries have built dams and hydroelectric power plants on the River. These hydroelectric dams provide power for many countries along the course of the river. The major dam is the Iron Gate project, completed in the early 1970s. It involved both former Yugoslavia and Romania to construct a large hydroelectric power station. The project was actually composed of a dam and two power plants located at the Iron Gate Gorge, on the border of Romania and Serbia. Another large dam (the Gabcikovo dam) was built in southern Slovakia and completed in 1992.
Industrial use of the Danube is mainly present in the major cities, namely Vienna, Budapest and Belgrade. The irrigated areas are in the second half of the river, especially in Hungary and Bulgaria, both countries for which agricultural economy is quite large. Fishing in the delta and in the river is well developed as the basin provides a marine habitat for more than 100 species of fish including some endangered species such as the sturgeon. However, the next section will show how the river has nearly become unfit for irrigation as well as for drinking water because of the lack of regulations and the increase in traffic and pollution.
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The Danube Bend in Visegrád
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Current Environmental Concerns
The Danube was once a great center for human daily life and at the same time a fabulous ecosystem with hundreds of species living in its waters or on its banks. Today, the most romantic river in the world no longer exists as such. The density of the local species has decreased to a point where several of the mammals, birds, and fish are endangered species, such as the white-tailed eagle, the black stork, the dalmatian pelican and, as mentioned earlier, the sturgeon. Because of human overuse and pollution, "the Danube now attracts raw sewage from cities, chemicals from agricultural run-off, waste from factories and bilge oil from ships. Much of this pollution is later washed up on coastal beaches, spreading disease and making them unsafe for residents and tourists alike. Chemicals in the water have killed much of the marine life and destroyed the Danube's fishing industry." (Lovatt) Unfortunately scientists and environmentalists have been able to study the full extent of the pollution only relatively recently, after the fall of Communism in 1989.
An example of human negligence that lead to an environmental disaster is the following. On January 31 st 2000, 100,000 cubic meters of wastewater, contaminated with cyanide and heavy metals, spilled from the dam of a tailings lagoon at a mine in Baia Mare, into the River Lapus. The toxins flowed into the Somes, the Tisza, and finally the Danube rivers. The effect on the Tisza, Hungary's second largest river and one of the Danube's main tributaries, have been particularly grave: much of its wildlife has been destroyed. Hundreds of tons of dead fish are only the most visible sign of the disaster, which has virtually eradicated all life in parts of the rivers and endangered people's livelihoods and drinking water sources. In order to fully understand what impact such an incident has on the ecosystem, one should consider that the concentration of cyanide 700 km downstream from the mine in Baia Mare was 2 mg/l, and that scientists consider a concentration as low as 0.1 mg/l to be fatal for humans and the environment. Unfortunately these disasters occur relatively often because of improper or old facilities. Shortly after the accident, water pumps were shut off in Belgrade and fresh drinking water was delivered by truck for several days.
Industry and mining are responsible for most of the discharges of hazardous substances into the Danube basin. The increased amount of nutrients in the water causes high levels of nitrate in drinking water. Furthermore, the agricultural sector contributes largely in the load of nitrogen and phosphorus in the Danube, and transport is an important source of oil pollution and lead contamination.
On top of pollution from hazardous substances, the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 considerably clogged the waterway. Rubble from bridges over the Danube destroyed during the 11-week bombardment have blocked traffic on the river and tied up freight shipping between Yugoslavia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) has expressed worries over chemical spills from bombed factories near the river. The effects of the Kosovo conflict on the Yugoslav environment have been devastating. An international environmental expert team from the FOCUS group has reported that "Yugoslavia is faced with an ecological disaster unless urgent measures are taken to alleviate the areas worst affected by the bombing." Clearing of the Danube is estimated to cost more than 25 million dollars.
Measures to Protect the River
Competition for available water is a serious problem in the Danube basin due to the lack of planning and water management. Romania, which is largely affected by the pollution of the river as it is downstream, has set up an environmental protection and rehabilitation program for the Danube. The program plans to reconstruct the ecological system in order to restore the fishing potential of the river. It will also improve the overall quality of the water and sewage networks. Finally, it will take part in the European program called "Green Danube", which concentrates on the conservation and survival of the river and its ecosystem.
The UNEP, the European Union, and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) are among the most dedicated to clearing the Danube and restoring its initial environment. The WWF has recommended a five-step recovery plan after the cyanide spill disaster. These five steps are the following: clean-up of the contamination near the mine in Romania; long-term monitoring program along the whole river system; improvement of the water quality situation; conservation and restoration of areas spared by the spill that can contribute to the re-colonisation of the river; institution of a river basin management plan. Several world foundations have declared the Danube a protected area. The Romanian part of the delta was declared a Biosphere Reserve and listed under the World Heritage Convention in 1990.
The Danube served as a main line of defense in the early ages and went on to transport people and resources across Europe, linking the West to the East. Today, its economical importance is obvious as it also links the South to the North of Europe through the Main-Danube Canal. However, the most romantic river of Europe has perhaps become the most polluted and its ecosystem is not guaranteed a bright future unless serious management plans are applied by all Danubian countries.
References
Source: http://www.public.asu.edu/~goutam/gcu325/danube.htm
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