D10: Impact of Contaminants - Hydromod

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Integrated Water Resource Management for Important Deep European Lakes and their Catchment Areas EUROLAKES D10: Impact of Contaminants FP5_Contract No.: EVK1-CT1999-00004 Version: 4.0 Date: 25/07/01 File: D10-vers.4.0.doc Page 14 of 136 WFD once the Dangerous Substances Directive has been repealed. The five daughter directives to the Dangerous Substances Directive (listed in WFD Annex IX) will be reviewed. For those substances, which are found on the first WFD priority list, quality standards and emission limits will be updated. For those which are not on the first priority list, standards shall be reviewed with an option for entire repeal (Article 16(10)). Combined approach In general, under the Water Framework Directive, specific environmental quality standards (EQSs) for pollutants (i.e. concentrations of pollutants, not to be exceeded in the receiving waters) and more general ecological-status objectives must be met by applying controls on pollutant discharges. For certain activities and certain pollutants, a different form of combined approach applies whereby emission controls based on BAT, relevant emission limit values or, in the case of diffuse impacts, Best Environmental Practices must be applied first. If these are inadequate for meeting an environmental quality standard or objective, more stringent emission controls must be set accordingly. This true form of combined approach not only achieves the required environmental standards and objectives, but may even reduce inputs below these targets. The BAT and Best Environmental Practice requirements drive polluters to audit and improve their overall environmental efficiency. Such a combined approach applies to substances and processes controlled by the Nitrates Directive, the IPPC Directive, the Urban Waste Water Directive, directives adopted for priority substances and also the existing daughter directives to the Dangerous Substances Directive (Article 10). For priority substances (regulation at EU level), both environmental quality standards and uniform emission limit values should be set. However, Article 16(6) merely states that the Commission should "take account of Community-wide uniform emission limit values". It remains to be seen whether this is a binding requirement. In the absence of Community-wide measures on priority substances (i.e. if the Council and Parliament are unable to agree on measures), Member States have to act on these substances anyway. Article 16(8) states that Member States have to establish environmental quality standards (EQS) and "controls on the principal sources of such discharges, based inter alia on consideration of all technical reduction options". This statement implies that Member States must apply the strong form of the combined approach, with application of Best Available Technologies first, and stronger controls if necessary. After all, this is the regime that applies in the event of Community-wide measures being agreed. Derogation and Extensions of Deadlines Regarding Chemicals Article 4(4) allows Member States to extend the deadline for achieving good status by up to twelve years beyond 2015. Such a rule is justified by the need to take account of adverse natural conditions or insurmountable technical difficulties. However, there is also a more problematical clause allowing extensions on the grounds of disproportionate expense. Fortunately, the reasons and justification for making use of an extension of the deadline must be included in the River Basin Management Plan, for which public consultation is required at all stages. It should therefore be possible to ensure that extensions are only used when it can be shown that achievement of the objectives is impossible within the agreed timetable.
Integrated Water Resource Management for Important Deep European Lakes and their Catchment Areas EUROLAKES D10: Impact of Contaminants FP5_Contract No.: EVK1-CT1999-00004 Version: 4.0 Date: 25/07/01 File: D10-vers.4.0.doc Page 15 of 136 Less Stringent Objectives Article 4(5) may cause even more problems. Member States are allowed to exclude specific bodies of water from achieving the objectives because they are "so affected by human activity … that the achievement of the objectives would be unfeasible or disproportionately expensive’. The weakness is that this paragraph not only applies to past human activities, but possibly also to ongoing ones. Potentially, this clause might be used to permanently exclude very polluted sites from the scope of the Directive’s good status objectives (though not from the objective of progressively reducing pollution by priority substances/priority hazardous substances). The formulation of Article 4(8) requiring effects on other bodies of water to be taken into account should also be noted. However, there are many steps requiring public consultation in the process of applying such a derogation. Furthermore, a lot of conditions have to be met. Given sufficient public scrutiny, it should be rather difficult for a Member State to abuse this clause. Summarised Comments on WFD with Respect to Chemicals 1. Quick adoption of the list is necessary, but list is not complete All the 32 substances proposed by the Commission on the list of priority substances are well known. They pose a major threat to the environment and public health and should be dealt with as soon as possible. We welcome the Commission’s quick prioritisation process for substances under the WFD. However, to ensure consistency with the Union’s OSPAR commitments, the Commission should have included more substances in the list. Particularly, the substances identified as hazardous by the OSPAR Strategy and which are also on the “List of Chemicals for Priority Action” under the OSPAR Convention, should be added to the list of priority substances. 2. Identification of priority hazardous substances must not be compromised by socio-economic considerations The identification of priority hazardous substances should be based: - on the selection of priority substances by the COMMPS procedure, which is taking account of substance properties, uses, market volumes and environmental occurrence and leads to the list of priority substances; and - on available “hazard assessments” and “best available knowledge”. This widely accepted procedure in the EU and OSPAR does by definition NOT take socio-economic considerations into account. 3. Identification of priority hazardous substances for the precautionary protection of EU waters The WFD’s overall environmental objective for the measures against pollution by priority hazardous substances is “the aim of ceasing or phasing-out of discharges, emissions and losses of these substances” targeted at the precautionary protection of freshwaters and the oceans. Discharges, emissions and losses of priority hazardous substances can occur through many pathways: Direct use in the environment (e.g. pesticides); direct use of the sub-
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D10: Impact of Contaminants - Hydromod

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