Legislation Flashcards
(18 cards)
What changes to legislation were introduced to combat the widespread of disease?
Sewers built and discharged downstream with drinking water abstracted and filtered upstream.
What are the European Directives?
Legal instruments which set objectives and allow member states to implement them within their own legal frameworks.
What is the Water Framework Directive?
What does it’s legislation achieve?
Holistic approach to the protection, improvement and sustainable use of all European water bodies through the use of catchment management.
Legislation which combines all previous directives into one overarching legislation for an integrated approach, ensuring directives are not working against each other.
What are the aims of the WFD?
- prevent deterioration
- protect aquatic ecosystems
- sustainable water consumption
- reduce pollution
- reduce effects of floods/droughts
What are the objectives of the WFD?
- provide a sufficient supply of surface and good quality groundwaters to provide for sustainable, balanced and fair water use
- significantly reduce pollution in both ground and surface waters
- protect the marine environment by reducing concentration of pollutants to near background values
Why is the WFD unique?
Deals with all water sources and provides water quality standards for water quality and water policy and management strategies.
Integrates all management and control.
What directives inform the WFD?
- Nitrates Directive
- Urban Wastewater Directive
- Groundwater Directive
- Bathing Waters Directive
- Integrated Pollution Prevention Control Directive
What does the WFD require?
Statutory strategic management plans are produced for each River Basin District known as RBMPs.
What is a River Basin Management Plan?
How does this link with the WFD?
Set out how objectives are to be achieved and provide justifications for not achieving good status. Made for each catchments and set out 6 yearly improvements that need to be made.
RBMPs are plans for how to meet the WFD standards.
What is the Environmental Agency?
How has it informed the WFD?
Competent authority to carry out implementation of directive.
Identified the RBDs.
What is an RBD?
Area of land and associated catchments and water bodies such as rivers, groundwater and coast as well as ecosystems.
Based on natural flow of water.
What does the WFD oblige member states to do?
Establish programmes to monitor chemical and biological water status within each RBD.
What are the Environmental Quality Standards?
Standards that are based on the lowest concentration of substance recorded as producing any physiological effects on a test organism.
How are Environmental Quality Standards made?
Iteratively. Safety factors are applied to account for intra and inter species variability and extrapolation from lab to field and from acute to chronic effect.
How are Environmental Quality Standards met?
5 point standard:
- limit
- summary statistic
- period in which it applies
- return period
- level of proof required for compliance
What is key to integrated catchment management?
Public consultation
Stakeholder engagement
Production of clear, accessible information
What does RBMPs identiy?
Sources of pollution and indicators of impact of humans on surface and ground water sources as well as a programme of measures/actions to achieve objectives.
Sets management plan for specified areas.
What advantages does catchment management approach have over a water quality management approach?
Eliminate problems from national boundaries by applying quality measures based on water not country borders. They include public consultations and stakeholder engagement to produce clear, accessible information. Ensure an integrate approach is applied.
