Prevention of Polluting Rivers and Lakes from Ships

Traffic on rivers and lakes in Europe has been ve1y well developed.The reason for this is the transport cost, relative speedand good connectivity of major European cities by rivers andcanals. In Croatia, this transport mode is lagging behind therest of Europe. Croatia is located at an interesting section of theriver transversal, but due to several reasons, river navigation inCroatia has not been developed to any major extent. As operatingriver ships the most frequent types are: towboats, pushboatsand self-propelled ships. The installed diesel engines, propulsionand auxiliary engines run at high power. Proportional tothe increase in the power of installed engines is also the increasein the volume of waste produced by the engines. Also, the olderthe engine, the greater volume of waste it produces. Ships mayalso cause pollution by wastewaters and garbage. This pollutionthreat grows with the greater number of people on boardand the age of the ship. In order to minimize these possibilitiesof pollution, it is necesswy to control all the time the properfunctioning of the ships, train the staff and construct receptionfacilities on land.