COMMON IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY FOR THE WATER FRAMEWORK DIRECTIVE: TOWARDS A GUIDANCE DOCUMENT ON EUTROPHICATION ASSESSMENT IN THE CONTEXT OF EUROPEAN WATER POLICIES.
(Posted 25 May 2006)

Eutrophication is addressed in several EU policies such as Urban Waste Water Treatment (UWWT; 91/271/EEC), Nitrates (91/676/EEC) and Water Framework Directives (WFD; 2000/60/EC). A number of international conventions address eutrophication in marine waters including OSPAR (North East Atlantic) and HELCOM (Baltic Sea). In their meeting in June 2004 in Dublin, the Water Directors agreed to start an activity on eutrophication assessment under the Common Implementation Strategy (CIS) process. The objective of the activity was to develop a guidance document focussed in particular on harmonisation of assessment methods and criteria across European water policy. The interim version of the guidance document has been presented to the Water Directors in their meeting in London in November 2005. It was generally recognised that the document provides already useful guidance both on technical and on policy relevant concepts.

A Workshop held in Brussels in September 2005 recognised that some on-going activities would have a strong impact on the way eutrophication is assessed, in particular the intercalibration exercise and some of the projects lead by the Marine Conventions. Moreover, the current version of the document is very valuable and should be circulated widely to spread its findings and to benefit from discussions and inputs from inside and outside the WFD CIS process. For these reasons, the Water Directors have decided to update and complement the entire document when the outcome of the on-going processes and projects is available and the wider discussions indicated the applicability of the proposed approaches in practice.

The interim guidance document and the policy summary can both be found on the public part of WFD CIRCA:
(http://forum.europa.eu.int/Public/irc/env/wfd/library
?l=/framework_directive/thematic_documents/13_eutrophication&vm=detailed&sb=Title)

The Steering Group welcomes any comments on the contents of these documents.

They should be sent by email to:   Jorge.Rodriguez-Romero@cec.eu.int.

EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENT AGENCY (EEA) - WATERBASE
(Posted 25 May 2006)

Waterbase is the generic name given to the EEA’s databases on the status and quality of Europe’s rivers, lakes and groundwater bodies, and transitional, coastal and marine waters, and on the quantity of Europe’s water resources. Waterbase contains timely, reliable and policy-relevant data collected from EEA member countries by the European Topic Centre on Water through Eionet-Water (formerly known as Eurowaternet) process. Eionet-Water selects validated monitoring data from national databases and adds information on the physical characteristics of the water bodies being monitored and on the pressures potentially affecting water quality. The added value of Waterbase is that data collected through the Eionet-Water process are from statistically stratified monitoring stations and groundwater bodies and are comparable at the European level. Waterbase data are primarily used in the production of the EEA’s indicator-based fact sheets.

Data sets for lakes, rivers, groundwater and transitional, coastal and marine waters are available:
(http://dataservice.eea.europa.eu/dataservice/)

Waterbase - map of river monitoring stations is a new addition. This map shows the locations of the river monitoring stations held in Waterbase-Rivers stations table. For earlier versions of Waterbase, the locations of river monitoring stations and lake monitoring stations are shown on the same map:

(http://dataservice.eea.europa.eu/atlas/viewdata/viewpub.asp?id=2124)

ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS, ERL
- A new open-access journal serving the environmental science research community
(Posted 25 May 2006)

Launched by the Institute of Physics (IOP). Daniel M Kammen, Editor-in-Chief, said: “Environmental Research Letters will be a new, world-class, free-to-read journal dedicated to bringing together intellectual and professional scientists, economists, engineers and social scientists, as well as the public sector and civil society who are engaged in efforts to understand the state of natural systems and, increasingly, the human footprint on the biosphere.”

The journal content will be completely free to read at:
(http://erl.iop.org)

EU ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION PROGRAMME IS UNAMBITIOUS AND RISKS LOSING CONTROL OF EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENT PROTECTION
(Posted 25 May 2006)

European Environmental Bureau, EEB, Europe ‘s largest federation of environmental citizens’ organisations, has issued hard-hitting comments on the Commission’s progress with its Sixth Environmental Action Programme (6EAP). Among EEB’s concerns are serious delays in implementing the Programme’s objectives, and questions over the Commission’s efforts to enforce environmental compliance. EEB commissioned a report from the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) to assess the Commission’s progress on the 6EAP four years into its ten-year cycle. EEB will use the report’s findings to kick off discussions at the interim review of 6EAP, planned for the second half of this year.

“Although we’re not yet half-way through the Programme’s cycle, we can already see some major trends, and they are not encouraging”, said John Hontelez, EEB’s Secretary General. “IEEP’s report shows that, of the Programme’s 41 major objectives, only six have so far been met, and 12 have shown no progress at all. We’re also very concerned about the emergence of a new type of legislation, Framework Directives. These build on reporting and process requirements, including the delegation of regulatory decision-making to comitology and co-regulation, instead of on common targets and deadlines. The report also raises a big question mark about the Commission’s ability to enforce environmental objectives.”

As a result of IEEP’s report, the EEB has presented DG Environment with a set of recommendations, and has drawn some initial conclusions for EU Institutions on how best to reinforce the environmental agenda to achieve the 6EAP’s objectives in the remaining six years of the programme:

(http://www.eeb.org/Index.htm)