Report on the visit to Garla Mare, April 2005

Description of Garla Mare

Maps, statistics, general information

Fig. 1. Landscape near Garla Mare. Visitors: Sandra Schinke, Stefan Deegener, Anneloes Wolters. Report by: Anneloes Wolters. This report consists of two parts: ‘Waste management’ and ‘Atrazine pollution’.

Content A short thanks to our hostesses and hostes ......................................................................... 3 Garla Mare: maps and statistics. ......................................................................................... 4 Social life .......................................................................................................................... 13 Learning from former projects.......................................................................................... 14 Other environmental problems and tips............................................................................ 15

A short thanks to our hostesses and hostes During our visit to Garla Mare we had the opportunity to experience the famous Romanian hospitality. Our hostesses in Timisoare made us beds and made our time in their city very enjoyable. After a trip with the bus, we directly found a hospitable ncounter in Garla Mare. The mayor invited us in his house, we thank him and his wife e

for the friendly environment and the nice talks we had. Everywhere we were received with the best food and wine, we felt hounered by the good care of our hostesses and hosts. We enjoyed the beautiful landscapes if the Danube and considered the Romanian rich with such beautiful riverbanks. Dr. Sandu showed is the beauty and the technical highlights of Mehedinth. We thank him for showing us his modern laboratory. Of course we were there to advice on some problems, and our hostesses showed us also the ‘not so nice’ spots in their village. We thank them for their courage to do so, because this might help Garla Mare develop a perspective towards agro-tourism. We left Garla Mare talking about opportunities and solving problems, which is a good start for working together on a better environment, natural and economical, for the villagers of Garla Mare. We good not have done our investigation without our lovely translaters, Claudia and Adriana. We thank them for taking the time and effort to make us understand Romania and its inhabitants. Anneloes Wolters

Garla Mare: general maps and statistics. Garla Mare is situated near the Danube, the village has been built along the river a small hill. The village is surrounded by grasslands, gardens and wineyards. Further away start the fields where most people grow crops for their own use. In the fieldsinhabitants mostly grow corn, wheat, grapes and sunflowers. Vegetables are usualy grown in the gardens surrounding the house. The grounds surrounding Garla Mare are famous, there are hardly any stones in it and the soil is very fertile.

bank on

Fig.2 Map of surroudings of Garla Mare, source: City Hall

Fig.3 Map of the surrounding land of Garla Mare.

In Mehedinty, the water comes from the mountains and from the Danube into the County. The Danube is a large river, connecting most of Europe (see fig. X). Nearby Garla Mare there are beautiful reedbeds and an protected island in the river with a small forest. To enter this you need special permission.

Fig X Danube in Mehedinth.

Garla Mare has 3450 inhabitants, 530 of them depend on social support. The village has one main road that runs from Pristol through the village to Vrata. This road is paved and in good condition. The other roads are mainly without pavement,

ecause most people have a horse and wagon, this is only a problem when it has rained a lot. The roads are seldom narrow.

Fig. 3 City map of Garla Mare, source: City Hall. There are two groups in the villages: the Romanian and the Gypsies. The gypsies live at the left and right end of the village. The communication between there groups is bad. The Mayor tries to get in contact with Roma people.

b

Fig. 5 Main road in Garla Mare. There are some economical activities in Garla Mare. There are 3 mills, two for corn and one for wheat. The largest for corn is very famous in the region and produces 50 ton/day. The owner of the mill also has a pigfarm with 600-700 pigs, because he can feed the left overs from the milling process to these pigs. There are some shops in the village for food and building materials. The village also contains various bars, they serve 120 tables per day. In the mainstreet is a garage, but there are not a lot of cars in the village, cars are a luxury, some farmers do have a tracktor. (see fig. 4.)

Fig. 4 Tractor used for urine spreading during WECF pilot.

Fig X Normal transport with a horse and wagon.

Most villagers have a court with animals. In the village are: Number of cows 380 Number of horses 390 Number of pigs 1.700 Number of sheep 2.800 Number of Chickens, turckeys, geese.

41.000

Number of bee families 200 Tabel 1. Number of animals in Garla Mare. The map shows in the south two old communist pigfarms (colchoze). These are sold to a sjah and a relative of the former premier, they use it as an investment object. The farms

m ty. The colchozes have much room (see fig. 5 and 6)

do not produce anything at the moment, they are efor composting. There are still good roofs and floors.

p

Fig. 5 Old communist farm, corn storage.

Fig. 6 Old communist farm. Right from these former farms, seen from the Danube that is, are fishponds. They used to produce a lot of fish, nowadays people go fishing there, but the do not grow fish anymore. Right from these ponds are reedbeds with birds: Ducks, geese and coots. It has now been forbidden to grow fish there. The fish farmer who had good production there left last year. During the spring the reed is burned by villagers so that they will have

baskets.

he infrastructure in Garla Mare needs investment. There is no drinkingwatersystem, villagers use water from the wells. There is no sewerage, most villagers have pit latrines. There is no gasinfrastructure, but there is electricity in the village. Most people do have cable television, because there is not much entertainment in the village, television is very important. Around 150 villagers have a newspaper, you can get a subscription.

fresh reed to tie up the grapes and to make T

Apele Romane and the City Hall worked together on a proposal for a drinkingwatersystem. Tabel 2 contains some figures on estimated water use in the village. Unfortunately such a system seems to be too expensive for the villagers to sustain.

Denumireaconsumatorului

Unitatea deconsum

Nr.consumatori

Norma deconsum(l/U.M.)

Qzi med(m3/zi)

Coeficientde variatie

zilnicaKzi

Qzi max(m3/zi)

Coef. devariatieorara

KO

Qorar max(m3/h)

Nr. locuitoriactuali

3.4501. Nevoigospodaresti

Nr. locuitori inperspectiva

4.312 80 345 1,3 448,5 2,22 41,5

TOTAL 1 345 448,5 41,5Nr.locuitoriactuali

5302. Nevoi publice(scoli, gradinite,etc.)

Nr.locuitori inperspectiva

663 30 19,9 1,3 25,8 2,22 2,4

TOTAL 2 19,9 25,8 2,43. Necesarul de apa pentru animale din gospodariile individualeVite capete 380 100 38,0 1,1 41,8 2,0 3,5Cai capete 390 50 19,5 1,1 21,5 2,0 1,8Porcine capete 1.700 31 52,7 1,0 52,78 2,0 4,4Ovine capete 2.800 10 28,0 1,1 30,8 2,0 2,6Pasari capete 41.000 0,4 16,4 1,1 18,0 2,0 1,5Albine familii 200 0,3 0,06 1,1 0,07 2,0 0,0TOTAL 3 154,7 164,9 13,84. Necesarul de apa pentru procesul tehnologicMoara faina Productie

(tone/zi)50 2000 100,0 1 100,0 2 8,3

Bufete(restaurante)

Serviciu(mese/zi)

120 15 1,8 1 1,8 2 0,2

TOTAL 4 101,8 101,8 8,5TOTAL 621,4 741,0 66,2

Table 2. Estimated waterconsumption by Apele Romane and City Hall.

Social life In Romania who you know is more important than what you know. So it is wise to use the connections from villagers to get things done. It is important to have a reliable partner in Romania, they get things done better and cheaper. People are not used to foreingers, a connection to someone in the village is important to make them trust you. During our visit we got stared at is also in an unfriendly way, mentioning the name of your hostess helped making the atmosfere more relaxed. Of course our hostesses showed the famous Romanian hospitality and spoiled us the whole week with delicious home made food and wine. There are many fights in the villages and many people are related. This makes working together somewhat complicated. Alcohol is a problem, there are many alcoholics in Garla Mare. Many people do not see the future very promising and start drinking. There are many men drinking on the streets, the women stay at home mostly. This is why women like Geo-san, because it is a reason to meet each other and talk together. Now they have a reason to meet each other regularly. The authorities and companies have close connections towards each other. During communist time this helped improving the production and the economical situation. Now these structures are still there but for a capitalist system this does not give the promised lower prices. People are working on improving the organisation of institutes and legislation to make this relation between governments themselves and governments and

companies a more business orientated one.

Learning from former projects

e

ine is o

uring conversation it turned out that the implementation of the project had some

n legislation before starting the implementation. Think of building licenses but also the measures that have to be

ners

ho ownes the materials? Who is responsible for sustaining the project? Who pays for sustaining and in what way and when?

- Try to hire as much villagers a possible, creating jobs is the most important thing in Garla Mare right now.

- People from the city don’t think much of villagers. They also know little of rural life. Always get information from the people from the city as well as from the villagers.

- Buy materials in the village. - Make most of the project public, als the costs. In this way you prevent

speculations on costs and villagers can tell you if you got a good price or not. - Try to start projects that are supported by the villagers from the start. Ideals are a

good motivation, but in practical life sometimes not of much use. - Make the project a project from and to the villagers, this will lower the chance of

things getting stolen.

It seems better that the waste managementprogramme is developed with Geo-san and thlocal authorities together. The programme must be so cheap that the villagers or the local government can pay for it themselves. The past years WECF built a eco-san dry double vault toilet for the primary school in Garla Mare. The children are happy with the toilet and use it in a proper way. The urused on the fields of the docter this year and the compost looks very good according tthe expert from Hamburg University. Technically spoke the project is a succes. Ddifficulties. The mayor described the problems they had implementing and sustaining thenew toilets. For some new projects the following should be considered:

- There must be a research on the Romania

taken to protect the environment or the regulation on buildingstructure and materials.

- During planning keep in touch with the local authorities and the partners involved, also during the actual building or implementing. Are all the partfollowing the planning and who gets to pay when not?

- Make the responsibilities clear from the start. W

Other environmental problems and tips.

me other environmental problems:

on

This investigation deals with the topics solid waste and atrazine pollution. Because sometimes environmental problems are related to each other or solutions for one problem might help solve others, here you find so Erosion of the hillsides of the village. As shown in figure 6, the steep slopes of the hill which Garla Mare is built, show signs of erosion. At some spots people try to stop the loss of land by filling the spot with garbage. Planting plants or treese might help to prevent the loss of building area for Garla Mare.

Fig. 6 Erosion on the village border. The grass is very short everywhere, mvill eanim lfind fields with very mAlps. In the landscape further away from Garla Mare there are some sand dunes. This mig b Fir aair poll The acooking and heating. Gas is very expensive, so most people use wood. Many fields are not in use for production, many people don’t have the money to invest in seeds and fertiliser. Even though the mayor keeps the price for renting land low, 20 euro per hectare per year, some people can’t afford agriculturing, some even let it out to other farmer in exchange of a part of the crop. Maybe wood production on these fields might

any animals graze in the grasslands surrounding the ag . Horses are grazing there, sheperds have herds with sheep, goats or cows. These

a s belong to the villagers. Sheperds use mostly the Danube banks, there you can uch different plants and herbs. It looks like meadows (alms) in the

ht e a sign of too many herds in the area.

es re everywhere from the garbare and from stoves, people burn plastics. This causes ution. There is a big difference between air quality during day and night.

re re not many forests in the area, much of the wood has already been used for

offer the area wood for burning. This might also prevent erosion in some spots and

f and

ned in the courtyards for protection. ost people like dogs little more, but not very much. The other animals are there for

transport and food. The horses look very skinny, they graze with their frontlegs bound together near the garbage dumps. Swallows are nesting in the eroded spots beneath the garbage dumps. There are walls of earth there and the swallows nest in holes in the ‘walls’. There are also holes with foxes or rabbits at these spots. It is not clear if the garbage influences the nesting of the birds. (see fig. X)

provide some income or work. The villagers have a different opinion on animal rights than most Dutch and Germanpeople: animals are there for labour or food. But the production of meat is not of an industrial scale, so the animals are in rather good shape compared to that of the pigs and

en in Dutch industrial production farms. h Citizens tell that since the ‘colchozen’ (pig farms with lots of cornstorage) on the banks of the Danube are closed, the rats from there came to the village. Now they have lots orats in the village. The villagers dislike this very much. They have cats to catch micemall rats, but they dislike cats also. Dogs are chais

M

Fig. X Swalows have nests, foxes and rabbits have holes.