Management perspectives on a deep aquifer system for rural water supply in Olt and Vàlcea counties, Romania

Abstract

The water supply in the Romanian counties of Olt and Vàlcea is mainly from groundwater from a deep aquifer system in Pliocene formations. Isotope analyses have been used to establish the supply area of the deep aquifer system. The age of the groundwater has been estimated for two samples by using 14C analysis. A simplified numerical model for a north–south cross‐section has provided global values for the hydraulic conductivity and effective porosity of the aquifer system. The groundwater from permeable horizons deeper than 120–140 m is highly mineralised and is, therefore, inappropriate for use as a water supply. Because groundwater resources are limited, the water supply for industry and domestic use in urban regions cannot increase too much. Thus, the deep aquifer system could also be used as a water supply for rural regions.

Isotopic fingerprint of the middle Olt River basin, Romania

“…In the northern and central part of the middle Olt basin, along faults and tectonic lines that act as regional shallow groundwater drainage system, numerous springs are present. Moreover, the existence of an important thermal groundwater source in the Calimanesti area confirms a deep-reaching groundwater circulation separated from the shallow local flow system that is characterized by long residence times [4,15].…”

“…In August, the Olt River water starts in ID 1 at − 9.67 ‰ for δ 18 O value enriching in ID 2 to − 9.56 ‰, depleting in ID 7 to − 9.73 ‰, enriching to − 9.36 ‰ in ID 10 and depleting again to Olt River Tributaries -points 3, 4, 5, 6,9,11,12,14,15,16,17 (c) Figure 6. δ 18 O and δ 2 H temporal variation for the middle Olt River and its tributaries.…”

“…There are several studies published on isotopic investigations of Romanian rivers [8][9][10][11][12], some with emphasis on the use of tritium as a tracer in the environment [13,14], but only few regarding the Olt River [15]. In this paper we focused on the middle watershed of the Olt River (Romania), a Danube tributary, presenting the results of isotopic investigations conducted during seasonal campaigns between November 2010 and August 2011.…”

Using stable isotopes in tracing contaminant sources in an industrial area: A case study on the hydrological basin of the Olt River, Romania

“…Current research focuses mainly on identifying pollution sources and determining the contributions of these sources (Peterson et al, 2001;Setzinger et al, 2002;Master et al, 2003;Segal-Rozenhaimer et al, 2004;Reinhardt et al, 2006;Nestler et al, 2011;Kanduc et al, 2012;Widory et al, 2013). As for isotopic investigations on the rivers in Romania, there are several published studies (Cuna et al, 2001;Costinel et al, 2009;Vremera et al, 2011;Butiuc-Keul et al, 2012), some with emphasis on the use of tritium as a tracer in the environment (Varlam et al, 2010;Faurescu et al, 2011), only few regarding the Olt River (Dinu et al, 2000;Popescu et al, 2014) and none on the subject of pollution source identification using the δ 15 N fingerprint. For this reason, the paper investigates the sources and transformations of inorganic nitrogen compounds (nitrate, nitrite and ammonium) in the middle Olt River basin, near the industrial area of Ramnicu Valcea, by applying a combination of physico-chemical and isotopic techniques, to determine if there are major industrial nitrogen releases in the environment.…”