A modern approach of water management in the Danube River basin

The current level of pollution in basin of the Danube River threatens the health of both human and aquatic ecosystems as well as the biodiversity and bioproduction. This determined the countries that are riverine to the Danube to cooperate on regional and international levels to adopt adequate measures that are able to stop the degradation of water and improve its status. The key issue in solving the problems mentioned above is to develop integrated water management policies. The objective of the present work is to highlight the principles that define the modern concept of water management promoted by the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and to provide some input concerning their implementation along the basin of the Danube River. Taking into account the fact that the most significant WFD principles are: regional cooperation, public participation to the development and implementation the plan of measures to combat pollution and reduced the costs for services, in the Danube River basin, the water management has three levels of coordination: international, national and sub-basin level. In the approach considered, the measures adopted for preventing/reducing pollution are directed towards the main polluters: agglomerations, industry and agriculture and aims mainly to improving the wastewater treatment by introduction of the Best Available Techniques (BAT) in industry and of Best Agricultural Practice (BAP) in agriculture. The application of these measures has important advantages especially related to reducing the risk of pollution and improving the water status, as well as to provide real benefits to human health and aquatic ecosystems.