Implications of the Water Framework Directive

The EU Water Framework Directive, which came into force in December 2000, aims to help ensure that water is more effectively and sustainably managed for the benefit of both society and the environment. It brings together management and protection of the whole of the water environment – surface and groundwater – and the activities and processes that impact it.

For groundwater, the WFD places a number of obligations on Member States (MS). The primary requirement is that groundwater is protected at least to the same level as that required by the existing Groundwater Directive (80/68/EC). Beyond this MS must strive to ensure that all groundwater bodies are of good status – in terms of water quality, this is based on thresholds for the chemical constituents of groundwater and their impact on ecosystems. Clearly this is most relevant to surface water ecosystems and so highlights groundwater’s important place in the hydrological cycle.

The route to achieving good status is mapped out in the WFD. It requires an initial characterisation, implementation of monitoring and a programme of measures to reach or maintain good status. With the UK’s high population density, intensive agriculture and a legacy of heavy industry, many of our groundwater bodies will undoubtedly be found to be at risk of not being of good status by the compliance date of 2015. These “at risk” bodies must be further characterised and are likely to require more monitoring and potentially greater controls in order to achieve or retain good status.

Because of the high degree of complexity in addressing groundwater, the WFD provided for the production of a new groundwater directive. This will provide details of criteria for assessing good groundwater chemical status and the identification of starting points for trend reversal. The Directive will also detail controls on indirect discharges to groundwater that would otherwise be lost when the existing Groundwater Directive is repealed.

It is very significant that diffuse pollution, which is excluded from regulatory control in the current Groundwater Directive (80/68/EC), is included in the WFD. The implications of these controls to the UK, particularly in relation to nitrate and pesticide concentrations in groundwater, may be very serious. Nitrate pollution of the unsaturated zone in the Chalk and Permo-Triassic sandstone aquifers, due to application of agricultural fertilizers is widespread and a store of decades of high level nitrate loadings is held in this zone. Increasing trends in nitrate concentrations are widespread in groundwater sources. Some of these sources now pump groundwater which must be blended with low nitrate waters from other groundwater sources or be treated before public supply. The challenges of reversing these trends and achieving good groundwater status is likely to be an immense one and in some cases may not be achievable in the timeframe dictated by the WFD.

Clearly in order to make assessments of groundwater chemical status and trend reversal an adequate monitoring system will be required. It seems likely that the monitoring will have to be carried out by both the environment regulators and the water utilities to avoid duplication and wasted effort. Costs will of course have to be borne by the tax payer or water users.

The Water Framework Directive is generally welcome as a means to manage better the water environment, however, as is indicated here, the implications of meeting its requirements are wide ranging for the UK. The capacity of those responsible will be severely challenged, both in terms of financial and human resources. Further, the scientific understanding may not presently exist to underpin the management decisions required. The potential implications of the WFD have yet to be fully appreciated by the general public.