« Back

Abstract: The authors present certain hydrological data of the Romanian Danube and then give the history of the banking, one of the most important state works of the modern Romania. The dams built between 1910-1978, though resisting many floods with minimal damages were brusted during the flood of 2006, inundating 80,000 ha, i.e. 17% of the banked precints. The authors analyse the natural and the man-made causes of burstings emphasizing the lack of the maintainance of the dams being the main cause of their actual state. The optimal measures for the protection of the floodable lands should be neither destroying the banking system, nor to reverting to altenative land use schemes for agriculture and for pisciculture, but restoring and operating the dam system by a responsible agency adequately organised, moreover establishing floodable precints (on the site of former lakes and marsh lands) for the attenuation of the flood wave.

Keyword: Danube, floodplain, banking, floods, dam construction, precints, floodable areas