Estimate of sea loading by pollutants originating from the littoral counties in the Republic of Croatia

The paper reviews the data of 10 yr of following up sewage (waste water) inflows of anthropological origin into the sea from all the coastal settlements in Croatia. In particular, we report the sea loading by biochemical oxygen demand (BOD₅), expressed by the inhabitant equivalent (I.E.), for seven littoral counties. We estimated the loading of a coastal sea area for each county separately. The objective was to avoid any over- or underestimation of amounts and significance of sewage inflows into the seawater. For this purpose, a precisely determined sea volume up to the 10 m isobath has been chosen. Because of the inadequate treatment of wastewater, the total loading of that maritime territory expressed in terms of i.e. was found to be 26% higher than expected from the actual number of inhabitants. However, daily input represents only 12‰ of the considered volume of the sea. Recipient spent only 0.7% of the disposable oxygen quantity in the sea.