QUANTIFICATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT AND RISK INDUCED BY INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITIES ON GROUND WATERQUALITY: CASE STUDY CORDUN - ROMAN AREA, ROMANIA

Abstract

The question of whether environmental assessment has achieved its goal of helping to reach better decisions has continually engaged the attention of academics, policy makers and environmental impact assessment practitioners. Answering this question requires several different groups working together and/or in sequence, and examining the effectiveness of environmental impact and risk assessment. EIA has tended to focus on the identification of impacts associated with planned activities or projects, whereas ERA involves a rigorous analysis of those impacts: the calculation of the probability, and magnitude of effects. The integrated method described herein for environmental impact and risk assessment has the advantages that it is very easy to be used by non environmental experts: it calculates the impacts and risks, correlated with measured concentrations of quality indicators for environmental component, considered representative in assessment process; it is not a subjective method because several mathematical steps are applied. Also, the lack of experience of evaluator doesn’t influence the results of assessment process, and it will reflect in a very objective way the real situation. The purpose of this work was to propose a new method for integrated environmental impact and risk assessment and apply it on a case study in order to make the right decision concerning the quality of ground water from evaluated area. Thus, groundwater from ten drillings was sampled and analyzed over the period 1995-2006 (exception years 1997, 1998 and 1999). From each drilling over the period 1995-2006, eight quality indicators considered representative for evaluated situation were analyzed. The results showed that, in period 1995 – 2006, the ground water quality was highly negative influenced by industrial activities developed on studied area. The maximum value for impact and risk induced in ground water is in 1995 year, when the industrial activities from this area were working at maximum capacity. Thus, it is absolutely necessary to apply the measures for remediation to improve the quality of ground water and control the pollution, considering the fact that the ground water quality needs to be at optimum parameters, required by national legislation.