ADECAGUA

ADECAGUA WORKSHOP, BARCELONA, 22-23 OCTOBER 2001 -
APPLICATION OF EUROPEAN WATER QUALITY DIRECTIVES

ADECAGUA is the Spanish association for the protection of water quality. They organised this 2-day workshop to review progress with the implementation of relevant directives in Spain and to consider the effect of recent and forthcoming directives.

The 70 or so delegates were mostly Spanish and included representatives of central, regional and local government and from universities. I attended to present a paper on implementation of the Drinking Water Directive in UK. Similarly there were papers on progress with the 1976 Bathing Waters Directive in the Netherlands, implications of the Water Framework Directive to the Wupperverband river basin management agency in Germany, and on the implementation of the Urban Waste Water Directive in UK, this last by a speaker from the Environment Agency. The remaining papers were on experience and expectations in Spain.

I discerned two main themes arising from the papers and discussion, regarding the position of Spain, although not necessarily unique to Spain:

(i) the difficulty of implementing most environmental directives because of typical rainfall patterns, which can have extreme effects on affect river flows, dilution of effluents and the demand for irrigation water.

(ii) the difficulty of implementing most directives because of the division of responsibilities between central, regional and local governments, exacerbated by a lack of clarity about these responsibilities.

Therefore the Water Framework Directive presents a particularly large challenge, as current practices are far removed from what the WFD requires. Organisation of responsibility for river basin management will need thorough overhaul. Allocation of waters to the various categories is expected to be problematic as there are found to be so many variations, for instance between lakes in various parts of regions such as Catalonia, let alone around the country as a whole.

Problems are being experienced with the definition of sensitive areas under the Urban Waste Water Directive. The government have designated less than 10% of the land area as sensitive - generally estuarine areas - whereas the Commission has proposed that the whole catchments leading to these estuaries should be so designated, with enormous cost implications. It must be noted that the Commission is similarly critical of the designations in most of the other Member States including UK.

There is little experience of public consultation and so there is a need to develop effective ways of achieving this. River transfers are acknowledged to be the 'burning question'. Transfer schemes exist for instance from the Tajo ( Tagus ) although often there is not sufficient water in the river to permit any transfer.

The point was made that most Spanish farmers receive very little 'free' water direct from the heavens, unlike their counterparts in northern Europe ( as a result many crops are grown under plastic so that any rain that does fall cannot have a direct effect ). It was argued that if farmers had to pay the economic cost of supplies to protect water resources, that would not result in a 'level playing field' across Europe as they would have to buy a comparatively large proportion of their requirement.

Money is raised for improvement schemes by sewerage and discharge 'taxes', but these are considered to be not high enough to raise sufficient money and of course the politicians are nervous of increasing them.

An administrative scheme has been developed in Catalonia for dealing with applications under the Integrated Pollution Control Directive. A 'window' office has been set up which receives and assesses the application and arranges consultation with all interested parties. In Catalonian law the concept of "positive silence" applies, that is, if you receive no response to your application within the stated time, you are entitled to regard the application as having been approved by default. There was however doubt that IPPC could be operated on this basis because, for example, there is a need to set discharge limits. Other delegates were concerned that such authorisations by default may be contrary to other water protection law.

A speaker from Barcelona University reviewing the requirements of the Framework Directive suggested that existing management plans should be torn up. He cited the Galicia Coast catchment plan. Others considered this too radical and felt that parts of the existing plans would be applicable to the new circumstances.

In contrast to all these problems, one speaker described an impressive programme for protecting bathing waters and bathers on the Catalonian coast. Permanent display posts of a high quality design and construction have been erected on the beaches. On these are displayed monitoring results from the previous week ( not the previous year as was formerly the case ), together with interpretation and relevant advice. "Pelicanos" boats used for dealing with oil spills and the like have been adapted to collect floating solids ( for instance plastic debris ) and, most impressively, ultralight aircraft are deployed. During the 17 weeks of the designated bathing season the beaches are inspected and sampled daily, including by aerial surveillance. Each flight reports an average of three events of which on average one results in some specific action. These events are typically visible discharges from boats or maritime construction works. In 2001, 205 out of 210 beaches complied with the requirements of the Directive.

It was noted that some time ago the Spanish government proposed development of a "water market", but no more has been heard of it recently. It appeared from the discussions at the workshop that there is a need to establish firm and transparent water management arrangements before attempting to open up competition.

I am grateful to ADECAGUA for inviting me to attend this interesting workshop.