Hidrológiai Közlöny, 2016 (96. évfolyam)
2016 / 3. szám - HISTORICAL SNAPSHOT - Kerekes-Steindl Zsuzsanna: Water quality protection in Hungary - policy and status
52 Hungarian Journal of Hydrology Vol. 96. No. 3. 2016. Those water bodies are in risk, in relation to maintaining the good status, in which one or more pollutants’ average concentration are gradually increasing or - in case of thermal waters - the temperature are decreasing. The purpose of the trend analyses is to indicate problems, which can occur in the actually good status water bodies in the future or significant and durable concentration or temperature changes can be already detected. Additionally to the above methods for surface and groundwater status assessments, on protected areas, designated by law (e.g. as bathing waters, drinking water resources, designated nutrient and nitrate sensitive areas, nature conservation areas), the status assessment is implemented regularly on the basis of the special requirements and limit values of the protection purposes, also. STATUS OF WATER QUALITY Surface water The quality of the Hungarian surface waters, mainly of the rivers, became polluted quickly from the end of 1950s. The main reason of it was that untreated communal wastewaters were entered into the fresh waters in large quantity practically without any treatment or after only minimum level of treatment. The large heavy and chemical industries with outdated technical level, not taking into consideration the environmental aspects, additionally contributed to the severe degradation of the water related ecosystems. In some smaller rivers the natural flora and fauna were practically devastated. Some larger rivers, where on their basins larger heavy industrial plants operated (e.g. Tisza, Sajó, Bodrog, Szamos, Körösök) became heavily polluted around 1960-70s. The large scale agricultural farms used fertilizers and pesticides in huge quantity. (Some of these persistent chemicals now are abandoned, because of toxic active ingredients, but sometimes still can be detected also in surface and groundwater waters.) The accidental pollution events (havaria) were also very frequent that time, mainly arising from abroad. The population started to grow quickly in towns at the same time. The municipal wastewaters polluted heavily the surface water recipients even there where the municipal sewage network had been already built out, but without appropriate treatment plants. Budapest was a good example, where the wastewater of 2 million inhabitants was treated only approx. 30% portion in the 1980s and near to 1 million m3 untreated wastewater polluted the Danube daily. (The central wastewater treatment plant started its operation only in 2010, and thus all collected wastewaters of the capital became treated.) The lakes’ quality was not much better. The quality of large lakes became worse in 1950-60s, first of all the Lake Balaton, where in spite of the growing number of tourists, only minimal level wastewater infrastructures were built at that time. The lake became hypertrophic, during summers caused by mainly cyanobacteria (blue- green algae). Mass production of cyanobacteria species were frequent, which were harmful to human health. Fish kills were also quite a frequent problem, mainly because of the high organic and nutrient pollution level, but partly because different types of non-native fish-species were settling into the lake. 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1993 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Year Figure 6. Changes of organic pollution level in the Danube in Budapest. (Yearly average concentration of CODp - Chemical Oxygen Demand with permanganate (Source: OK1R 2016) As a positive effect of the water protection legislation the quality status of the Hungarian waters (Fig. 6). In 1988entered in force in 1960-80s the earlier rising pollution 1990 the big political changes were followed by substantial trends started to decrease a bit. But only the last decade of economic recession in Hungary and in the neighbouring the 20th century brought more significant improvements in countries. It was the time also, when in other upstream
