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Page Updated:
20-Sep-2006
SPS Homepage > News 2003
Water
monitoring stations inaugurated on Moldova/Romania/Ukraine
borders
11 November 2003
A NATO Science for Peace project has sponsored the setting up of a small network of four water monitoring stations on the rivers Nistru and Prut, which form the borders between Moldova and Ukraine and Moldova and Romania respectively. The opening of the water monitoring stations was marked by an inauguration workshop in Chisinau, Moldova, in late September, chaired by Prof. Georghe Duca, Minister of Ecology, Construction and Territorial Development of Moldova, co-director of the project, and attended by the Science for Peace programme director, Dr. Chris De Wispelaere. About 40 international experts participated in the workshop, including the NATO-country project director, Prof. J. Poças Martins of Portugal.
Transboundary water problems are often a point of tension between countries, when for example, uncontrolled discharges into rivers might lower the water quality which would then affect the drinking water of the local populations of neighbouring countries. Real time monitoring stations are key instruments in detecting pollution before such a drinking water problem would arise, and river monitoring forms the basis for a rational approach to river management.
The four new stations now in operation on the Moldovan border continuously measure changes in the characteristics of the water, such as acidity, temperature, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, and water level. Data are transferred via a new automatic remote data retrieval system by telephone to the State Hydrometeorogical Institute in the capital Chisinau. Data are then routinely transferred from the Institute in Chisinau to the Romanian and Ukrainian authorities. In a later development, all such information will be made available via the internet. It is also envisaged that the stations will be integrated into the international network that deals with the management of the Danube river.
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