SPECIFIC DETAILS REGARDING HAZARDOUS WASTE TRANSPORT AND DISPOSAL 

LILIANA MÂRA

Director, Strategy and Water Policies Directorate, Ministry of Environment, 12 B-dul Libertatii, Bucharest, Rumania.

1 INTRODUCTION

The human activity is directly generating pollutants having different degrees of toxiousness for environment and for society implicitly.

For economic and technological reasons, the ideal to achieve a closed revaluation cycle and reintegration into the circuit of the pollutants is still far from obtaining a real finality, although in the future, this will be the only way out of the present ecological deadlock.

2 ELEMENTS OF THE LEGAL SYSTEM FOR ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENFORCEMENT

For the purpose of ensuring the compatibility between the economic activity and the environment protection in Rumania, the legal and institutional system was created before 1989 for protecting and improving the quality of the environment, including the ecosystems and the whole natural biologic resource.

The principal Romanian environmental law dates from 1973 (Law no. 9). It provides a conceptual framework for environmental regulation, including principles and duties for the protection and improvement of all environmental media. These principles were developed through special laws, such as:

The Law on Water no.8/1974;

The Law on the disposal of wastes and recovery of materials, made in 1975 and up-dated in 1988;

The Law on the protection of forest, 1987;

The Law on the installations for the protection of the environment, 1986.

The inventory covers also the following areas: hunting and fishing, pesticides, nuclear activities, hygiene and health standards, air, water and soil quality, levels for noise, construction, permits and authorizations for the environmental protection and water management. Nevertheless, despite the intentions set out in the law, structural inadequate, including particulary political and soft budget constraints, rendered the laws largely ineffective.

A government decision in 1991 began the process of organizing an overall system of environmental management by establishing the present Ministry of Environment (no.264/1991).

The ministry has began the process of drafting a new general environmental law and new law management. In the future, the Moe should be involved on reviewing all legislation which may have an impact on the environment.

3 HAZARDOUS WASTES TREATMENT AND DISPOSAL

The effect of the hazardous wastes may be insidious, of wide spectrum and persistent. Rumania as a country of considerable industrial potential; that operated at full capacity until 1990, has annually produced important quantities of wastes and industrial residues, to which there are added municipal wastes, those wastes derived from livestock farms, as well as untreated waste wasters discharged from industrial enterprises or towns.

It is estimated that annually, over 75 mill, tons of various residues or wastes were deposited on the soil, out of which a great amount (about 22 mill.t) is represented by the ashes from coal-using thermal stations, sludge deriving from waste water treatment plants (about 15 mill.t/year), municipal wastes (over 2 mill.t/year) and so on.

Until now, from the point of view of the collection-separation-transport-disposal-revaluation process, the problem of wastes and residues has not been approached in a unitary way, showing great shortcomings, although there was, ever since 1979, a Decree of the State Council regarding collection, handing in, management and revaluation of wastes and other raw material resources, more often than not it was not observed.

The collection and transport stage shown and still shows great shortcomings, due to the shortage of adequate equipment and technologies. This generates a diffused pollution, difficult to trace or, if it is noticeable, hard to control and eliminate.

The separation stage was nearly lacking, therefore, the town stockpiles, for instance, are mostly mixed ones, including at the same time both street domestic wastes and treatment sludge and industrial sludges.

As far as the disposal stage, the existing data bring into relief over 1900 areas with waste deposits, out of which 696 belong to the communal administration, 660 to agriculture, 315 to the mining and oil production, 44 to the chemical industry, 33 to the metallurgical industry, 12 to the building materials industry and the other sectors.

The surface affected by wastes and residues is about 18 thousand ha., out of which 11,9 thousand ha. arable land. Out of these, about 2700 ha. agricultural lands are covered with ash from electric and thermal stations and about 2000 ha. are occupied by sterile deriving from metal treatment.

Besides the great occupied surface, the deposition lands were not always correctly selected, taking into account the waste characteristics and the risks they may generate. Moreover, the deposits are some times only scarcely developed, not ensuring protection of all environmental factors.

It should be mentioned that disposal of industrial wastes in stockpiles, pits, ponds lagoons is not always arranged and controlled, certain enterprises not giving importance to the noxious generated into environment. Therefore, nearby these deposits the underground waters, surface waters, soil and air are frequently polluted, and the landscape is modified.

The town dumps are generally located in areas which offer only a relatively natural protection as to the effects of the deposited materials; they are not equipped with the necessary developments as well as with bottom waterproofing, enclosing, infiltration and exfiltration drainage.

In the view of reducing waste quantities that would need unpolluted and controlled disposal some technologies have been promoted and they are at present available for the turning to good account the energy and the useful compounds of wastes, Thus, municipal waste and pig and cow slurry digesting has become a current practice which allows to obtain a quantity of digestion has equivalent to over 530.000 t.c.c. annually.

But the waste and residue reserves that can be evaluated are much higher. The calculations carried out for the industrial area of the city of Bucharest together with its outskirts have indicated that the metallic compounds recovery from waste waters and galvanization sludges may lead to the annually recycling of the following quantities of metals: 32 t copper, 23 t zinc, 8 t cadmium, 8 t nickel, 50 t chromium. Moreover the quantity of heavy metals recovered annually from waste waters and galvanization sludges in the industrial area of Brasov city amounts to: 11 t copper, 5 t cadmium, 9 t zinc, 3 t nickel, 10 t chromium.

The phosphogypsum, slag and ash deposits as well as untreated waste waters from the manufacture of pulp and paper also represent important secondary raw material sources which are waiting to be put in value. For this purpose rather reduces financial efforts are needed, but which Rumania cannot undertake in this transition period.

The ministry of Environment of Rumania, in its present structure, has been founded in 1991. One of its main lines of actions in the field of waste management was that of correctly estimating what has been produced up to now and of assessing the ways of doing away or evaluating the existing waste quantities. Until the end of this action, Rumania could not accept the idea of waste imports, especially those belonging to the category of highly dangerous wastes, whose elimination requires great financial efforts. However the paradox took place. Taking advantage of the fact that there are no strict regulations in the field and under the mask of certain unusable products but whose guarantee term was not specified, great quantities of toxic wastes were brought into the country by fraudulent means and then deposited under precarious conditions in densely populated areas.

Rumania is at present making efforts in solving this problem. But personally I think that we shall be able only to apply an old Romanian proverb saying "catch the blind pluck his eyes" while our country will be left with severe damages both at internal and at external level.

Recently, in order to avoid such situations, the Governmental Decision no.340/1992 regarding the importing regime any kind of wastes and residues as well as other health and environmental hazardous goods, has been passed.

The structural changes taken place in the Romanian society call for structural changes also in the outlook regarding the organization of the environmental protection activity and implicitly of the wastes management as part and parcel of this activity. Therefore, the ministry of environment and the environmental monitoring and protection territorial agencies were organized, while with the support of the World Bank the Strategy on Environmental Protection was drawn up; this Strategy has a chapter concerning waste management. We are far from attaining our aims, sometimes due to financial means, sometimes due to a poor ecological consciousness, but there is something that we know for sure: we live in an Europe in which ecology has no boundary and we must unite our efforts lest we should be faced with an ecological disaster.