Environmental Process Control: Strategies and Implementation

The structure and mathematical presentation of the optimal strategy for environmental process control is presented. This approach covers a wide variety of control systems, which have been constructed and analysed at the Institute of Environmental Engineering during the last fifteen years. Special attention is paid to the preventive environmental control and its tools: pollution prevention, life cycle assessment. The implementation results of preventive environmental control from more than 150 companies are presented in the paper.The investigations on water quality control issues are evaluated from the point of view of the interface between physico-ecological and socio-economical systems and decision support system based on river water quality model is suggested

Regional Persistent Organic Pollutants' Environmental Impact Assessment and Control Model

The sources of formation, environmental distribution and fate of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are increasingly seen as topics to be addressed and solved at the global scale. Therefore, there are already two international agreements concerning persistent organic pollutants: the Protocol of 1998 to the 1979 Convention on the Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution on Persistent Organic Pollutants (Aarhus Protocol); and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. For the assessment of environmental pollution of POPs, for the risk assessment, for the evaluation of new pollutants as potential candidates to be included in the POPs list of the Stokholmo or/and Aarhus Protocol, a set of different models are developed or under development. Multimedia models help describe and understand environmental processes leading to global contamination through POPs and actual risk to the environment and human health. However, there is a lack of the tools based on a systematic and integrated approach to POPs management difficulties in the region

Building capacity of the Baltic States to meet the EU Water Framework Directive through watershed demonstration projects

The Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission (ORSANCO), in cooperation with the United States EPA, is completing it role in assisting the Baltic Countries of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia with watershed management capacity building demonstration projects under the Great Lakes/Baltic Sea Partnership Program. The Countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania view the skills gained through this program as important to their objective of complying with the European Union’s Water Framework Directive and thus facilitating accession into the European Union. The program also addressed Kaliningrad’s desire to work cooperatively with their neighboring countries concerning shared waters. Three watershed demonstration projects were designed and implemented, two of which involved joint country efforts: Parnu River (Estonia) modeling for nutrients and bacteria survey; river basin assessment and management planning for the Lielupe Basin (Latvia and Lithuania); and data base development and cooperative water quality survey and analysis for the Sesupe River (Lithuania and Kaliningrad). The benefits of the projects include enhancing the country’s technical skills and the forging of relationships, without which achieving effective watershed management will be difficult to achieve.</jats:p