Hidrológiai Közlöny, 2016 (96. évfolyam)
2016 / 3. szám - HISTORICAL SNAPSHOT - Kerekes-Steindl Zsuzsanna: Water quality protection in Hungary - policy and status
48 Hungarian Journal of Hydrology Vol. 96. No. 3. 2016. tasks to the National Directorate General for Disaster Management.- The operative water management tasks are the responsibilities of the 12 regional water directorates, under the co-ordination of General Directorate of Water Management. These organisations are responsible for river basin management planning and for the operation of water quantity monitoring network also.- The analytical measurements and samplings of the state-responsibility water quality monitoring remained the task of the environmental inspectorates’ laboratory network (12 inspectorates with 7 laboratories). The inspectorates belong to the county level Governmental Offices, supervised by the Prime Ministers’ Office.- Some special water related tasks belong to other ministries. E.g. soil protection, the environmental remediation programs of polluted sites, the environmental impact assessments, the 1PPC permitting procedure and operation of National Environmental Information Network (“OK1R”) are under the responsibilities of Ministry of Agriculture, as responsible for general environmental protection issues. Control of the quality of drinking water (tap water) and activities relating to bathing water quality are the tasks of authorities and organisations responsible for public health (also as part of county level Governmental Offices), under the supervision of the Ministry of Human Resources. Since 2014, there are new actors in the water sector: water utility managements are coordinated by the Ministry of National Development, while the financial regulation lies with the Hungarian Energy and Public Utility Regulation Office. The water sector earlier had a research institute, called the Water Resources Research Institute (VITUK1), as a background organisation. VITUKI played a major role in the establishment and development of water protection institutional framework and in solving other sort of state- responsibility tasks. After 60 years of operation the institute was closed down in 2014 leaving serious professional gap behind. The other former background agency, the Environmental Management Institute (KGI) was also closed app. 10 years ago. This institute was earlier responsible for the collection of surface water quality monitoring data, status assessment, coordination of remediation, and other types of tasks. Some special tasks, mainly relating to monitoring and assessment of groundwater resources, and well documentation management are implemented by the Geological and Geophysical Institute of Hungary (and its predecessors). Though there are e.g. special expert groups (e.g. biologists, ecologists, water quality and water management experts, economists) working in institutes of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and on university faculties (e.g. Budapest University of Technology and Economics), who are participating in special water relating research programmes, but this is always dependent of the available financial sources. At this moment there is a plan that within the Hungarian Academy of Science institutional structure a new water research unit would be established. WATER QUALITY MONITORING SYSTEM One of the most important tools for the protection of the quality of waters is the regular investigation (monitoring) of the water status by sampling and analytical measurements. On the basis of the assessment of the monitoring data the right water protection measures can be designed, and the effectiveness of their implementation can be measured. The history of the hydrological monitoring (measuring water quantity) date back for centuries in Hungary. The „simple” control of water quality, e.g. for drinking water or bathing uses, has historical background as well. Sporadic records relating to the status of water quality, flora and fauna also indicate that in accordance with the technical possibilities and knowledge of the past, „water quality monitoring” started long time ago in Hungary. Nowadays this activity is based on the environmental protection act, which states that establishing and operating measuring and monitoring systems on the status of the environment is the duty of the State. (In frame of it, the minister of interior is responsible now for the coordination and supervision of water quality monitoring activities.) The same act also determines that the users of the environment, the operators are responsible for controlling their pollution loads if discharging into the environment (including direct or indirect wastewater effluents), and should provide regular data to the authorities. All of this information has to be collected and stored in the National Environmental Information System (OKIR). Surface waters The first published measurement data stem from 1873, when the water quality of the River Danube was discussed in terms of the cations and anions found in the river water. Only few publications are known from the first decades of the 20th century. The need of the society for investigating the quality of waters occurred first upon the extensive industrialization after World War II. The VITUKI made plans for the establishment of a nationwide water quality monitoring system in 1952. (The investigations covered 1400 stations of 130 rivers and 25 water quality parameters, the frequency of samplings was once a year.) Development of the laboratory network of the district water directorates started in 1956 on the basis of the professional knowledge, which was available in VITUKI. With involvement of these laboratories in the early times, large number of stations (app. 800) with low sampling frequency (app. 4 samples/year) were monitored in 1960s. New sampling rules have been put into force in 1968. In this new network the number of stations was reduced to about 300 and the sampling frequency increased to 12 annually as the minimum. This system was considered as the establishment of regular national water quality monitoring network. (The monitoring covered the 113 most important water courses of the country, the analysis of app. 50 water quality parameters and sampling frequencies of 12, 26 and 52 per year). The national network was operated
