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The unsatisfactory situation regarding the quality of water in surface streams in Prague is attributable to massive pollution by waste water. Water management authorities (Povodí Vltavy, a.s., PVK, a.s.) maintain a database of major polluters. There is other sources of pollution too. Non-polar extractable substances (NES) in water streams indicate a pollution of oil hydrocarbons, and for the most part are washed off road and street surfaces. The biological contamination also results from the municipal sewage collection system of Prague, from which a mixture of sewage and rainwater flows through separation chambers directly into surface streams, especially when it is raining. As a rule, illegal overflows of cesspools also empty into the rainwater collection system, thus representing yet another source of fecal pollution of streams. The quality of water in the Vltava River at Libeice, downstream of Prague, is afftected not only by Prague’s sewage and rainwater collection, but also by residual pollution caused by the Central Waste Water Treatment Plant in Troja. The latter pollution decreased in 1997. The caseload of accidents due to leakages and spillages of pollutnats was 8 in 1997 by the Czech Inspectorate of the Environment. In most of the cases the perpetrator was not found in spite of the assistance provided by the police and Povodí Vltavy, a.s. Among larger accidents were, for example, the sinking of the river boat Kamýk with a subsequent leakage of approximately 1 cubic meter of oil products into the Vltava River or a spillage of 3 to 10 m3 of oil products into the rainwater collection system of the Bohnice Housing Project. The pollutants got into the rainwater collection system from the sewage system through a partly clogged rainwater separator. In the first seven months of 1998 MHMP registered ten cases of a leakage/spillage, mainly of oil products into surface streams. |
What is causing the problems with surface water quality?| There is also information related to this issue in the following sections of the report | ||
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