CONSEQUENCES OF INDUSTRIAL LIVESTOCK ACTIVITY ON THE QUALITY OF WATERCOURSES IN AREAS ADJACENT TO FARMS* PUBLISHED

Hortensia RĂDULESCU1, Laura ŞMULEAC1, Anişoara IENCIU1 ¹Banat’s University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine“ King Michael I of Romania “ from Timişoara, Romania hortensiaradulescu@yahoo.com
Ensuring increased amounts of animal origin food has been made possible by passing to the practice of intensive animal husbandry in industrial farms. The maintenance of the hygienic-sanitary conditions corresponding to a very large number of animals in the shelters determined the introduction of the hydraulic manure evacuation system. Thus, the mixture of feces, urine, fodder residues and bedding material is discharged from the shelters with the help of washing water, becoming wastewater. The wastewater management, for volumes on average 6-8 times higher than the actual amount of manure, raises particular issues regarding the maintenance of water quality in the adjacent watercourses. The pollutant potential of wastewater is due to both its composition and its volume. The paper presents the consequences of the wastewater discharge into the adjacent watercourses. The research aims at the dynamics of the nitric water level in the watercourses located in the area adjacent to the location of some industrial animal farms or are connected to them by large drainage channels. The influence of industrial animal husbandry activity in Timiş County on the quality of surface water was achieved on the Bârzava, Timiş and Bega Veche watercourses, as a result of the discharge of livestock wastewater, whose pollutant potential increases proportional to the number of farm animals. In relation to the territorial location of the animal breeding farms, the control sections were chosen, one upstream and one downstream of the pig breeding farms. Thus, the chosen control sections were: for the river Bârzava-Gătaia and Partoş, for Timiş -Lugoj, Şag, Grăniceri and for Bega-Veche -Pişchia and Cenei. The assessment of water quality is monitored in terms of nitrate and nitrite content, depending on the quality category required for the watercourse in the respective control section (GD 1146/2002). Nitric loading of surface water was assessed by comparing the nitrate and nitrite content, its monthly dynamics being pursued for two consecutive years in the monitored control sections. The usefulness of the paper consists in preventing the depreciation of the watercourses quality, watercourses located near the industrial farms of animal breeding which, as a result of wastewater discharge, can reach from severely depreciated to irreversibly polluted. The importance of the obtained results lies in knowing how to take some measures of wastewater recovery which, depending on their volume, composition and appropriate ground watering norm, can be used at the same time for fertilization and irrigation of soil.
industrial livestock activity, livestock wastewater, adjacent watercourses, nitrate- nitrite content, nitric depreciation
environmental engineering
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