The Dâmbovița () is a river in Romania. It rises on the Curmătura Oticului, a mountain pass that separates the Iezer Mountains from the Făgăraș Mountains proper. It passes through Bucharest and flows into the river Argeș near Budești, in Călărași County. Its length is and its basin size is . Dâmbovița County is named after the river.
Name
The name of the Dâmbovița is of Slavic origin, derived from Common Slavic dǫbŭ (дѫбъ), meaning "oak", as it once flowed through the oak forests of the Wallachian Plain. Its upper course, upstream from the Valea Vladului, is also called Valea Boarcășului.
Dâmbovița in Bucharest
thumb|Dâmbovița in [[Bucharest]]
For centuries, Dâmbovița was the main source of drinking water for the city of Bucharest. While there were a few dozen water wells, most of the water in Bucharest was distributed by water-carriers.
Bucharest folklore mentions the waters of Dâmbovița as "sweet", and even at the beginning of the 18th century, Anton Maria del Chiaro considered it "light and clean". However, toward the end of the 18th century, as the population of Bucharest increased, the river ceased to be as clean, and hence the need of the aqueducts. The earliest aqueducts with public fountains (cișmele) were built during the rule of Prince Alexander Ypsilantis.
Dâmbovița has never been navigable, but there has been an unsuccessful attempt in 1902 to introduce boats on the river.
Early in its history, Bucharest had few bridges over the Dâmbovița, as the right bank was only sparsely populated. The estates of some boyars used to extend on both banks of the river and they had footbridges. After exiting Bucharest, the Dâmbovița water were polluted, due to the hundreds of millions of cubic meters of raw sewage that were dumped every year directly into the channel below the river, but now the quality of water is much improved.
In Bucharest, the river is vertically divided into 2 separated parts. In the lower part, under the Dâmbovița river floor, there is a channel which contains the sewage from the city. The two flows join into a single flow when exiting Bucharest. There are river plants and fish that live in the upper side of the river and sometimes one can even see some fishermen on the shores.
The quality of the water was very much improved as of October 10, 2011 with the opening of Glina Wastewater Station, which is the first sewage treatment plant of Bucharest, with a capacity of , while a second one, which will clean all the water (with a capacity of 12 m<sup>3</sup>/s) should be finalized by 2015.