Heavy load and high potential: anthropogenic pressures and their impacts on the water quality along a lowland river (Western Bug, Ukraine)

Abstract

A pronounced pollution of surface water bodies in the Western Bug River Basin, Ukraine, has been caused by outdated or overloaded wastewater treatment plants, agriculture, industry and coal mining. These pressures have led to a generally poor state of both chemical and microbiological variables creating health risks of various kinds. The state of surface water quality for the Western Bug and five main tributaries was assessed by measuring physical, chemical and microbiological indicators during field campaigns in autumn 2009 and spring 2010. Longitudinal profiles were sampled to identify major sources of pollution and to reveal dominant processes of matter turnover. In addition, the occurrence of antibiotic resistant strains in isolates from stations along the Bug River was investigated. Results clearly underpin the negative impact of the Poltva River as a major source of pollution for the Bug River and further outline an elevated potential health risk from pathogenic bacteria originating from this source. Despite these devastating impacts, a high elimination potential of the Bug River with respect to primary organic loads as well as elimination of pathogenic bacteria was observed particularly at Dobrotvir Reservoir. Further downstream, pollution is kept high because of untreated waste effluents and phytoplankton mass developments due to high phosphorus concentrations.

Integrated Water Resources Management under different hydrological, climatic and socio-economic conditions

“…While showing a good morphological quality (Scheifhacken et al 2011), the river is strongly polluted with inputs from agriculture, industry, urban areas and mining activities Delfs et al 2011;Ertel et al 2011;Tavares Wahren et al 2011). Two general research questions are (1) can the lessons learned from the newly formed German states be useful for improving the water quality in the Bug Area and (2) what are the consequences for the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive as the Bug River crosses the EU border.…”

How to assess hydromorphology? A comparison of Ukrainian and German approaches

“…Point sources such as overburdened or obsolete urban waste water treatment plants as well as industrial activities (mining, pesticide deposits) are often responsible for high pollution loads (Ertel et al 2011), but also diffuse agricultural inputs contribute to pollution (Ertel et al 2011;Malynovsky et al 2007).…”

“…In this context, the Western Bug River basin was chosen as an example for a medium sized river basin facing a crucial pollution load already in its headwaters and thereafter affecting both the Ukrainian as well as EU branches of the river basin in varying dimensions (Ertel et al 2011;Yanko 2008;Tacis 2001Tacis , 2006. The Ukrainian catchment of the Western Bug contains several important point source polluters in the vicinity of the river or its tributaries (Ertel et al 2011).…”

“…The Ukrainian catchment of the Western Bug contains several important point source polluters in the vicinity of the river or its tributaries (Ertel et al 2011). The monitoring efforts remain restricted solely to water quality problems and primarily focussed on point source polluters (Tacis 2001(Tacis , 2006.…”

“…In conjoint studies aspects of water quality problems (Ertel et al 2011), data scarcity in the modelling of climate projections , sewer systems (Blumensaat et al 2011) and soil distributions (Tavares et al 2011) are analysed. Moreover, comprehensive work is related to the methodology for dealing with regional changes (Schanze et al 2011) or capacity development within the model region (Leidel et al 2011).…”