The Danube, one of Europe's major transport arteries, has finally been cleared of war debris left behind by the Kosovo conflict four years ago.
The project has restored a major, environment-friendly cargo route linking Europe's main industrial heartlands with the North Sea and the Black Sea.
But the 26-million-euro (US$29.3 million) reconstruction program just completed under the authority of the Budapest-based international Danube Commission may well bring fresh environmental pressures to bear on the heavily polluted Black Sea.
Already, the scheme has encouraged a surge in development of shipping, road and rail infrastructure to take advantage of the promise of improved trade in the wake of the disastrous Balkan wars.
And the resulting pollution burden will hit the Black Sea just as it is being exposed to vastly increased oil transport from the rich, new production fields of the Caspian region.
Stanko Nick, president of the Danube Commission, says the one remaining physical obstacle to shipping on the Danube is a pontoon bridge at the city of Novi Sad, in Northern Serbia, which is currently opened to river traffic only three times a week.
However, even it will be removed shortly on completion of a six-lane, 40-million-euro permanent crossing that will allow uninterrupted navigation of the river.
In the meantime, an annual traffic of about 10,000 bulk freighters carrying perhaps 100 million tonnes of cargo is expected to resume trade along the river, which was effectively cut in two when NATO bombers attacked Novi Sad on April 2, 1999.
Two of the bridges are already back in place. The reconstruction program has been financed largely by the EU.
The 2,400km scenic Danube waterway, crossing 11 countries, is the longest in Europe. Together, the Danube and the Rhine form one of the continent's most important freight transport arteries. The Rhine, with its canals for sea-going ships arriving at the North Sea coast, is connected to the Antwerp-Rotterdam-Amsterdam area with access to the industrial heartland of Germany, Alsace and North-west Switzerland.
The Main, another tributary of the Rhine, connects with the Rhine-Main-Danube canal into the Danube system through Slovakia, Austria and Hungary and on to the Black Sea.
Slovakia recently inaugurated a barrage (an obstruction designed to increase the depth of a watercourse) on the River Vag -- a tributary of the Danube -- that will eventually link with the River Odera, enabling ships to cross from the Black Sea to the Baltic via Poland. And the Czech capital of Prague is linked to Hamburg via the Elbe. For reasons of shipping profitability as well as public health and insurance, Europe's freight transport planners want to encourage the use of bulk cargo shipments by rivers and canals, which will also cut pollution and ease pressure on the roads.
A study on East European freight transport patterns prepared by the Vienna development think-tank Osterreichisches Institute fur Raumplanung (OIR) during the Balkan wars proposed a substantial increase in river traffic at a fraction of the investment now absorbed by road haulage. It is being read very closely now that the reopening of the Danube has created an opportunity to moderate the environmental impact of freight transport.
Several new cargo terminals and bridges along the river are being built and more are planned. They will facilitate a considerable increase in the use of the waterway, which the OIR study says was only used to 10 percent of its capacity even before the outbreak of the Balkan wars. In addition, six major European transport corridors crossing or adjacent to the Danube basin are being upgraded as a matter of priority. Much of the investment for these projects has been raised by the EU, which has just increased its Balkan development aid commitment by 200 million euros to 4.6 billion euros.
But development on such a scale may have implications for the vulnerable landlocked eco-system of the Black Sea, one of the most heavily polluted marine environments on the planet.
This coincides with fears that ship-generated pollution, now estimated at 45,000 tonnes of oil a year, could increase substantially during the current decade as a result of a flood of hydrocarbon exports generated by the Caspian production fields coming on stream.
Perhaps even more damaging, land-based pollution pouring into the Black Sea basin originates mainly from the Danube as well as the Dnieper, the Dniester, the Don and the Kuban rivers. They bring raw sewage from thousands of population centres housing some 170 million people in 13 countries, heavy metals from some of the most polluting nations on earth and agricultural chemicals leached from half the fields of Europe.
The Black Sea countries, preparing for the combined effect of these assaults on their common marine environment, have assembled a collective development master-plan backed by the EU, the World Bank and the UN Environment Program. The rescue scheme includes the reform of land-use planning throughout the basin.
Several programs focus on the Danube, including one to restore floodplains and wetlands in the lower reaches of the river and to create a protective area for the river delta.
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