Romania's tap water that failed the health directorates' tests in 2025

Why Dobrogea: nitrate in the public network, not just in wells#

Nitrate in the groundwater of Dobrogea, Romania's south-east between the Danube and the Black Sea, is well known; the page Well water explains where it comes from and why it matters for babies. The 2025 DSP reports show it reaching public networks too: 41 zones in Constanța and 38 in Tulcea were above 50 mg/l. The reports name at least 117,125 consumers as “possibly affected” in these zones.

For 55 of the 79 zones, the period the DSP declared runs to 31 December 2025, the last day of the reported year. That is not a measurement taken that day: it is the declared interval from detection to compliance, and the report gives no compliance date before the end of the year. In 20 zones, all in Constanța, the period began before 2025. At Abrud (Adamclisi commune, Constanța county, not the town of Abrud in Alba) it starts on 15 May 2023, with a maximum of 733.2 mg/l, almost 15 times the limit, for 102 consumers.

32 zones went above 100 mg/l. The measure in the Constanța report is nearly always the same: code E3, “restrictions for sensitive consumers”. In 33 of its 41 zones it is the only coded measure. The Constanța report does not say who the sensitive consumers are; the Mehedinți DSP, in the same kind of report, names babies and pregnant and breastfeeding women.

Across Romania, nitrate appears in 126 zones in 17 counties in the 2025 reports; Dobrogea has almost two thirds. The second-highest value is in Olt county: 554 mg/l at Vișina Nouă, from 17 June to 31 December 2025, for 505 consumers.

E. coli, enterococci and arsenic#

For E. coli and intestinal enterococci the limit is zero: any bacterium found in a sample makes the water non-compliant. In the 2025 reports, 202 zones in 23 counties had at least one of them. The Maramureș report abbreviates them as “Ec” and “Ecc”; its cards read them in the order of the report's own parameter list (coliform bacteria, Escherichia coli, enterococci).

Arsenic has a limit of 10 µg/l. It appears in 20 zones in 5 counties, nearly all in the west and south-west: Timiș 7, Bihor 6, Arad 5, Mehedinți 1, Prahova 1. The Arad report prints 237.45 µg/l at Apateu, the same figure it gives for manganese at Pâncota, so the value should be checked with the DSP before it is quoted.

What the authorities did, according to the reports#

The report template asks for the measures taken, as codes. For the 126 nitrate zones the most common is E3, restrictions for sensitive consumers (62 zones), then T1, treatment set up or improved (32). Water from a temporary source, E2, appears in 12 zones, prohibition of use, E4, in 3, and action at or replacement of the source, C1 and C2, in 18.

Some reports write the measure in words, without a code; there the card's code is read from the template wording, and the report's text is shown when there is no code. For 26 nitrate zones the measure is only in words, with no code, and for 2 no measure is given.

What a DSP report says and does not say#

• The unit is the supply zone: a geographical area fed from one or more sources, with roughly uniform water quality (Government Ordinance 7/2023); a zone can cover several villages (the Tatlageac zone in Constanța covers the resorts of Neptun, Olimp, Saturn and others), and a town can have several zones.
• The report lists only zones with problems. If a place is not in the available report, that does not show its water was compliant, that it was tested, or that it has a public network.
• “Consumers possibly affected” is the number printed for the zone or for the parameter; when the report gives both, the card uses the one for the parameter. It is not a count of people who drank the water.
• The period is the interval declared from detection to compliance, not a continuous measurement. When a printed period ends before it starts, the card shows it that way and leaves it out of any count.
• Values are as printed. A unit is changed only when, in the printed unit, the value would not be a breach (ammonium “1.39 µg/l”, below the 0.5 mg/l limit) or would be thousands of times too high; each change is recorded.
• The reports also list a few own systems of hospitals, care homes or firms; they appear in the place's card, separately, and are not counted as public networks (7 in 2025).
• For counties whose latest report is for 2024, the card says so. 2025 counts use only 2025 reports.

Questions#

Is the water in my network safe to drink now?

This page cannot say: the reports describe 2025, not today. Ask the network operator or the county DSP what tests they have for your zone; the county table links each report.

Does boiling remove nitrate?

No. Boiling does not lower nitrate; the explanation, and what it means for babies, is on the page Well water.

Why is my village not listed?

Either the report named it in no zone with a problem, or its zone is written only as a code, or the county report is missing. The place's card says which.

What does E3 mean?

It is one of the measure codes in the report template: “restrictions for sensitive consumers”. The Mehedinți report describes such a measure: a ban on drinking for babies and pregnant and breastfeeding women, with the DSP requiring the supplier to provide them free drinking water.

Method and sources#

The sources are the county drinking-water quality reports, searched for on the websites of the 42 directorates on 31 October 2026. Each report was read zone by zone: zone, consumers, parameter, highest value, period, cause and measures. Scanned reports were read from the page image. A second reader, who had not done the extraction, checked field by field up to 10 randomly chosen zones per county: 284 of 292 were right. Of the other 8, three had a value or parameter misread, now corrected; in five the report prints consumers as a range or per village, and the card shows the report’s text.

Places come from SIRUTA, the national register of localities (INS, 2026). A zone is linked to a place by the name printed in the report; when the name is spelled differently, shared by several villages, or only a code, the card says so. The reports carry no licence statement; this page uses the facts, with a link to each document.

• DSP reports: links in the table Which counties had not published a 2025 report.
• Government Ordinance 7/2023 on water intended for human consumption, annex 1 (parametric values).
• Norms approved by Government Decision 971/2023, art. 41 (county report, published in the first quarter).
• Directive (EU) 2020/2184 on the quality of water intended for human consumption.
• SIRUTA, register of localities, National Institute of Statistics, first half of 2026 (data.gov.ro).