Analysis Of The State Of The Environment, LocalAgenda 21 Realisation And Preparing For EUAccession For The City Of The Maribor

Abstract

The Republic of Slovenia with 2 million people is located in the south-western part of Central and Eastern Europe. Maribor is the second largest city in the Republic of Slovenia and its population is 130,000. It was one of the largest industrial centres of former Yugoslavia, the result of which were major environmental problems in the eighties and nineties: air pollution, groundwater pollution, and illegal dumps of municipal and industrial waste. After Slovenia had gained its independence, we witnessed changes in ownership, restructuring of technological processes, all of which in turn contributed to the improvement of the environment. Measurements of environmental pollution began 20 years ago, although they were not of such high quality as in the past five years. Thus the first data on air pollution, the quality of underground water as a source of drinking water, the quality of water in waterworks pumping stations and the quality of surface water date from 1978. With the independence of our country in 1991, the harmonization of the environmental legislation with EU guidelines at the state and local level was launched; besides, environmental parameters have been thoroughly monitored for the last five years. In-depth monitoring of air, soil, underground water, surface water, and wastewater pollution show that certain values exceed the state-defined parameters (pesticides, mineral oils, nitrates in drinking water, ozone in the air). A continuous upgrading of monitoring databases is used for the assessment of the state of the environment, analysis of trends and as the basis of sanitation programs in individual fields containing the schedules for their implementation. They are also used for the preparation of the long-term local environmental protection strategy Local Agenda 21. The Sustainable city, C.A. Brebbia A. Ferrante, M. Rodiguez & B.Terra (Editors) © 2000 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISBN 1-85312-811-2