Danube Delta: Water Management on the Sulina Channel in the Frame of Environmental Sustainability

Abstract

The Danube Delta is the newest land formed by both transporting sediments brought by Danube River, which flows into the Black Sea and by traversing an inland region where water spreads and deposits sediments. Diurnal tidal action is low (only 8–9 cm), therefore the sediments would wash out into the water body faster than the river deposits it. However, a seasonal fluctuation of water level of 20 cm was observed in the Black Sea, contributing to alluvial landscape evolution in the Danube Delta. The Danube Delta is a very low flat plain, lying 0.52 m above Mean Black Sea Level with a general gradient of 0.006 m/km and only 20% of the delta area is below zero level. The main control on deposition, which is a combination of river, wind-generated waves, and tidal processes, depends on the strength of each one. The other two factors that play a major role are landscape position and the grain size distribution of the source sediment entering the delta from the river. The Danube Delta is a natural protected area in the South-Eastern part of Romania, declared a Biosphere Reserve through the UNESCO “Man and Biosphere” Programme. Water is a determining factor for all the human settlements in the Biosphere Reserve, the whole Danube Delta being structured by the three branches of the Danube (Chilia, Sulina and Sfantu Gheorghe (Saint George)). Our case study is focused on the Sulina branch, also named Sulina Channel, which offers the shortest distance between the Black Sea (trough Sulina Port) and Tulcea (the most important city of the Danube Delta from economic, social and cultural points of view) for both fluvial and marine ships. The improvement of water resources management is the main topic of this chapter, in terms of water quality indicators, which will be presented in twenty-nine monitoring points, starting since a few years ago and updated to nowadays. During the study period, significant exceedances of the limit value were detected in case of nitrate-N (3.9–4.6 mg/L) at the confluence (CEATAL 2) with the Saint George branch and in the Sulina Channel after the Wastewaters Treatment Plant (WWTP) discharge area, as well as near two settlements, namely Gorgova and Maliuc. The higher concentrations of Nitrogen-based nutrients were caused by the leakage from the old sewage systems (where these exist) and the diffuse loads.