Realization of National Programme of Municipal Wastewater Treatment and the quality of surface water in Poland

One of the aims of improving water quality, resulting directly from the Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC, is to achieve in 2015, at least good status for all waters in the country. Following the adoption by Poland of the Water Framework Directive assessment of the economic and general cleanliness of water was replaced by an assessment of ecological status. In this way, the analysis of water status shall be treated as not only economic resources, but primarily as part of the ecosystem. The most important from the standpoint of human health protection, is the quality of water intended for human consumption.In the document „The purity of rivers based on the results of tests carried out within the national environmental monitoring in 2007–2009” is given that: – only 10.6% of the surface of flowing water meets the requirements of collective waters used for water supply for drinking, – up 28.7% of the length of monitored water is too polluted for them mildest demands posed conditioned needs of the economy. The decrease in water quality was affected by the physico-chemical pollutants such as pH, total suspension, manganese, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), CODCr, BOD5 and TOC. Large impact on reducing water quality category also had microbial contamination, the number of fecal coliform bacteria, fecal streptococci and total coliforms