Magas N. Increase of the environmental safety level of the Southern Bug River basin within the Mykolaiv region

The dissertation renders a solution to the relevant scientific and applied problem of increasing the level of environmental safety of water bodies through the development of brand new methods for assessing the level of impact of technogenic activities on the river basin. These methods take into account the organizational and technological aspects of environmental hazard of water use resources; they allow identifying environmentally hazardous water bodies and defining top priority areas for protection of water bodies in a specific region. The solution to these problems is particularly relevant for the southern Ukraine, which is referred to as a region with critical water supply. The structure and typology of the factors of technogenic impact on the basin of the Southern Bug River within the Mykolaiv region are defined. The major methods for assessing the potential and the level of environmental hazard of the factors of technogenic impact on the hydroecosystem of a river are presented. A brand new methodological approach to assessing the level of environmental safety of water bodies is introduced; it is based on comparison of the levels of hazardousness, impact on water quality of the water body, efficiency of monitoring, and anthropogenic loading of individual point sources. It is proposed to assess the level of environmental hazard presented by the sources of pollution of water bodies by the coefficient of their harmful impact measured on a five-level scale, from “safe” to “extremely hazardous”. The condition of the water environment in the basin of the Southern Bug River within the Mykolaiv region has been assessed taking into account natural and anthropogenic factors. There is established the level of ecological destruction of the basin and its components under the impact of technogenic factors, namely, radioactive contamination, land and river runoff use, and water quality. The dissertation presents the results of assessment of the impact of point sources of pollution on water bodies in terms of the technogenic risk, the harmful impact of discharge wastewater on the ecosystem, and the level of anthropogenic loading on the river basin. The level of environmental hazard of the sources of pollution of water bodies is also established. There are proposed major approaches to the organizational and technical solution of the problems of hydroecosystem protection of the Southern Bug River within the Mykolaiv region from the technogenic impact. They are based on environmentally sound principles of water use, zero-discharge and low-waste technologies. Keywords: ecological condition, surface waters, anthropogenic loading, monitoring of waters, environmental hazard, sources of wastewater discharge, low-waste technologies.