IDENTIFICATION OF THE SOURCES GENERATING IMPACT ON THE WATER QUALITY OF THE EAST JIU BASIN

Abstract

The main economic activity in the Jiu Valley is mining, which provides to the society an important content of mineral raw  materials required for the development and progress, representing  the main activity in producing the value chain. The majority of the  mining activities and other economic activities deployed along the  basin of the East Jiu generates both negative environmental impacts (more or less serious) and positive impacts such as those  related to employment, staff training, creating infrastructures etc. In  the most cases, the negative impacts of the human activities can  be much improved up to a point or even eliminated through the  remedial measures, particularly through environmental rehabilitation of the affected areas. But if a watercourse is strongly  affected by sediments generated by the human activity still on the  top side, the pollution will be  intensifed much more on the bottom  side with signifiant changes on the aquatic ecosystems and with an  impossibility of consumption and the use of the water resources by  the riparian population. The main objective of this paper consists of the identification and the description of all human activities  presented along the East Jiu and the analayses of the negative  influence exerted on the river water quality. To compare the water  quality of the East Jiu and monitoring its variations in time, it was  used the method water quality index (WQI), having the straight  purpose of aggregating individual indicators (expressed in physical units) in a unique water quality index.