Vízügyi Közlemények, 2003 (85. évfolyam)

2. füzet - Juhász E.: Magyarország vízi közmű ellátása

Magyarország vizi közmű ellátása 207 Dulovics-Juhász—Kárpáti'. A szennyvízelvezetés hazai fejlesztése - eredmények és anomáliák (Hírcsatorna 1999. 4-8 sz.) Juhász E.-Kárpáti A.: A szennyvíziszap hosszútávú kezelése és biztonságos elhelyezése. Vízügyi Közlemények LXXXII. évfolyam, 1. fiizet, 2000. * * * State of public water utilities in Hungary By Dr. Endre JUHÁSZ С. E. The commencement of constructing public utilities in Hungary dates back to one and half centuries. The first (in 1868) of these utilities was the steam engine driven waterworks of Pest, Buda and Óbuda, the three cities that formed Budapest later. They were very new and up-to-date facilities and were ahead of the similar works of Europe. Construction of the sewer system of the united capital Budapest started in about one and half decade later and this lag in development have not been eliminated ever since those times. At around the turn of the Millennium many Hungarian cities followed the example of Budapest by constructing drinking water supply and combined sewerage systems. The two lost world wars have substantially curtailed the possibilities of further development. After the 2

n

d World War the most important task was the reconstruction of the damaged utilities. The state of water supply and sewerage of the truncated country is shown in Figures 1. and 2. Development in the next period was mainly focussed at drinking water supply, while the collection and treatment of waste waters got a secondary role only. Figure 3 illustrates the development tendencies. The level of securing piped water supply to all settlements was reached only in 1994, after the political turnover. However, there are still problems related to the quality of water supplied to the consumers, in terms of a few quality constituents. To solve these problems by the year 2015 the Government allocated 220 billion HUF for the development. The priority components of this development include; the decreasing of the arsenic content of drinking water (in certain regions of the country, where the local subsurface water resources have high natural arsenic content) to the EU requirements; the development of the laboratory and institutional structure; and the increasing of the safety of supply. The present state of public water utilities in Hungary is shown, according to counties, in Table I. The ratio of homes connected to drinking water supply system is 93.4% (as of 01 January, 2003), while further 4.5—5.0% obtain their drinking water from the public wells of the same supply network. This means that 98% of the population of Hungary receives safe, controlled/supervised, drinking water. The ratio of homes connected to public sewers was more than 56%. The difference between the development levels of water supply and sewerage (called in Hungary "the public utility scissors") is shown in Figure 4

, also for the various counties. An interesting and sharp contrast is seen between the development levels of Budapest and its surrounding Pest County. Comparing, however, this level to that of other regions it is apparent that the two together (termed Middle Hungarian Region) have the highest development level with the only 19% difference. Unfortunately there is a high lag in sewerage development in the Alföld (the Great Hungarian Plain) region. Water supply and sewerage networks of the regions are shown in Table III., while the development level of waste water treatment facilities is shown, in terms of hydraulic capacity, in Table IV. The national summary of treatment facilities is given in Table V. A characteristic scheme is the decrease, due to further development, of the ratio of "only