River Danube Page 3 of 3 Environmental impacts There have been a number of serious environmental impacts of the dam scheme. Firstly, the raising of the river has caused a marked change to the infamous and formidable gorge or Kazan section of the Danube which has been deplored by many who saw the Kazan section as one of the great river gorges of the world. Secondly, the waters have submerged the historically very important island of Ada Kaleh and the old town of Orsova (105 km²) and a population of 35000 inhabitants had to be removed, as well as the system of roads and the railway which were situated along the Danube. Ada Kaleh is supposedly the place where the Argonauts discovered the olive tree and until well into the 20th century it was famous for its Muslim community with its own mosques and fortress. The island remained official Turkish territory until well after the official withdrawal of the Ottoman empire as a result of a diplomatic oversight. Orsova was the historic border crossing in to the Magyar (Hungarian) governed Banat. Kossuth buried the crown of Stephen near to the town following the 1848-49 revolt in Hungary. Very little remains of the old town of Orsova and the new town has been located up the hillside and forms a linear settlement along the side of the Cerna Bay. For the railway between Drobeta Turnu Severin and Orsova it was necessary to build 56 bridges and viaducts, 100 passageways and 9 tunnels along the 24km stretch. A third environmental impact has been the significant slowing of the river's flow and the effective backing up of the rivers water. This has caused a backing-up of pollutants moving downstream from the major cities, agricultural areas and sometime war zones upstream. Eutrophic enrichment of the river, primarily by nitrates and phosphates from agricultural fertilizers and from municiple sewerage systems has caused the growth of algae and bacteria which use up the oxygen in the water. Fourthly, the flooding of the Danube covered large areas of heavily forested river side slopes and many of these slopes were not felled prior to the waters rising. This has caused there to be a lot of rotting vegetation in the river and consequent eutrophication of the river's water to add to other pollution problems. | 1 | 2 | 3 | Page 3 of 3