1.     Introduction

1.1.    The Water Framework Directive

The Water Framework Directive (WFD), which came into force on 22 December 2000, establishes a new framework for the management, protection and improvement of the quality of water resources across the European Union (EU). The WFD established new and better ways of protecting and improving our water environment with the overall objective of achieving co-ordinated and integrated water management across Europe.

The WFD calls for the creation of River Basin Districts. In case of international districts that cover the territory of more than one EU Member State the WFD requires coordination of work in these districts.

EU Member States should aim to achieve good status in all bodies of surface water and groundwater by 2015 unless there are grounds for derogation then achievement of good status may be extended to 2021 or by 2027 at the latest. Good status means that certain standards have been met for the ecology, chemistry, morphology and quantity of waters. In general terms ‘good status’ means that water only shows slight change from what would normally be expected under undisturbed conditions. There is also a general ‘no deterioration’ provision to prevent deterioration in status.

 Text box 1.1: Water Framework Directive - the backbone of EU Water Policy

The Water Framework Directive establishes a legal framework to protect and restore clean water in sufficient quantity across Europe. It introduces a number of generally agreed principle and concepts into a binding regulatory instrument. In particular, it provides for:

• Sustainable approach to manage an essential resource: It not only considers water as a valuable ecosystem, it also recognises the economy and human health depending on it.
• Holistic ecosystem protection: It ensures that the fresh and coastal water environment is to be protected in its entirety, meaning all rivers, lakes, transitional (estuaries), coastal and ground waters are covered.
• Ambitious objectives, flexible means: The achievement of “good status” by 2015 will ensure satisfying human needs, ecosystem functioning and biodiversity protection. These objectives are concrete, comparable and ambitious. At the same time, the Directive provides flexibility in achieving them in the most cost effective way and introduces a possibility for priority setting in the planning.
• Integration of planning: The planning process for the establishment of river basin management plans needs to be coordinated to ultimately achieve the WFD objectives.
• The right geographical scale: The natural area for water management is the river basin (catchment area). Since it cuts across administrative boundaries, water management requires close cooperation between all administrations and institutions involved. This is particularly challenging for transboundary and international rivers.
• Polluter pays principle: The introduction of water pricing policies with the element of cost recovery and the cost-effectiveness provisions are milestones in application of economic instruments for the benefit of the environment.
• Participatory processes: WFD ensures the active participation of all businesses, farmers and other stakeholders, environment NGOs and local communities in river basin management activities.
• Better regulation and streamlining: The WFD and its related directives (Groundwater Daughter Directive (2006/118/EC); Floods Directive COM(2006)15) repeal 12 directives from the 1970s and 1980s which created a well-intended but fragmented and burdensome regulatory system. The WFD creates synergies, increases protection and streamlines efforts.

Implementation of the Directive is to be achieved through the river basin management (RBM) planning process which requires the preparation, implementation and review of a river basin management plan (RBMP) every six years for each river basin district (RBD) identified. This requires an approach to river basin planning and management that takes all relevant factors into account and considers them together. There are five main elements of the process:

• •          Governance and public participation;
• •          Characterisation of the river basin district and the pressures and impacts on the water environment;
• •          Environmental monitoring based on river basin characterisation;
• •          Setting of environmental objectives; and
• •          Design and implementation of a programme of measures to achieve environmental objectives.

1.1.1.      River basin planning process

River Basin Management Plans are plans for protecting and improving the water environment and have been developed in consultation with organisations and individuals.  River basin planning is a strategic decision-making process that integrates the management of land and water within river basin districts. The river basin management planning process aims to improve and support sound and sustainable water management to deliver the requirements of the WFD while balancing the environmental, social and economic needs within the river basin district.

• The river basin planning process started more than ten years ago with implementation of the WFD in national legislation and establishing the administrative structures.
• The river basin planning process resulted in 2004 with an analysis of the pressures and impacts affecting the water environment in the river basin district. The findings were published in March 2005 in the characterisation report required by Article 5 of the WFD.
• River basin planning is a gradual cyclical process that involves public participation throughout. Characterisation is followed by a series of steps shown in Figure 1.1.

 Figure 1.1 The WFD river basin planning process

Source: Adapted by CIS WFD (2003)

1.2.    Hydromorphological pressures and habitat alterations

Europe’s surface freshwaters are affected by major modifications, such as water abstractions, water flow regulations (dams, weirs, sluices, and locks) and morphological alterations, straightening and canalisation, and disconnection of flood plains.  These are called hydromorphological pressures. 

Hydromorphological alterations are human pressures to the natural structure of surface waters such as modification of bank structures, sediment/habitat composition, discharge regime, gradient and slope. The consequence of these pressures can impact aquatic ecological fauna and flora and can hence significantly impact the water status.

Hydrological alterations refer to pressures resulting from water abstraction and water storage affecting the flow regime such as change in daily flow (hydropeaking) and seasonal flow. In addition, river stretches may dry up and water levels of lakes and reservoirs may be heavily regulated. The flow regime of a water body may be significantly altered downstream of an impoundment or an abstraction, and the biology may impacted. Alterations to the flow regime degrade aquatic ecosystems through modification of physical habitat and of erosion and sediment supply rates.

Morphology is the physical structure of a river, lakes, estuary or coast including, for example, the banks and bed of a river and the shore of lakes or coastal waters. Engineering or the way the land is managed can change the morphology of these waters. This has a direct impact on animals and plants and can lead to increased flooding or erosion.

Land reclamation, shoreline reinforcement or physical barriers (such as flood defences, barrages and sluices) can affect all categories of surface waters. Weirs, dams and barrages can alter water and sediment movements, and may impede the passage of migratory fish such as salmon. Using water for transport and recreation often requires physical alteration to habitats and affects the flow of water. Activities such as maintenance and aggregate dredging and commercial fishing using towed bottom-fishing gear can also damage physical habitats.

There are many human activities that result in hydromorpholgical pressures:

Agricultural activities have in many places affected the hydromorphological status of European water bodies. Water storage and abstraction for irrigated agriculture have, in particular in Southern Europe changed, the hydrological flow regime of many river basins. Intensification of agriculture included many land reclamation projects affecting transitional and coastal waters and affected many rivers that were straightened, deepened and widened to facilitate catchment drainage and to prevent local flooding.

Reservoirs are human-made lakes created by the damming of rivers to serve one or more purposes, such as hydropower production, water supply for drinking, irrigation and flood protection.

Inland waterway transport plays an important role in the movement of goods in Europe. More than     4 000 kilometers of waterways connect hundreds of cities and industrial regions.

Flood defence works may cause significant pressures on hydromorphology. Today many sections of the major rivers have dykes. The building of dykes resulted in the loss of floodplains as retention spaces for flood water.

In many cases, minerals are extracted from surface water. Sand used to reinforce the coast is extracted from other sea areas, while clay and sand used for concrete and building are usually extracted from the flood plains of rivers. Gravel mining have occurred in several European river basins.

Hydromorphological pressures, often connected with construction, marine transportation and tourism, and alter coastal zone, causing considerable changes in physical features of the coast including sediment transport and erosion.

 Figure 1.2: Conceptual overview of the change from natural waters to different activities resulting in pressures and altered habitats

Source: Raimund Mair, ICPDR

1.3.    WFD and hydromorphological pressures

 To maintain and improve the essential functions of our water ecosystems, we need to manage them well. This can only succeed if we adopt the integrated approach introduced in the WFD and other water policies. Many European water bodies are at risk of failing to meet the aim of the WFD of achieving good status by 2015, due to problems in the management of water quantity, modifications of the structure of river banks and beds and the connectivity of rivers, or unsustainable flood protection measures. Full implementation of the WFD throughout all sectors is needed to resolve these potential conflicts and to commit all users in a river basin to focus on the achievement of healthy water bodies with good status.

The WFD defines “good ecological and chemical status” in terms of low levels of chemical pollution as well as a healthy ecosystem defined as at least good ecological status. Classification of ecological status or potential is based upon the biological elements (phytoplankton, macroalgae, benthos and fishes), hydromorphological, physico-chemical quality elements and non-priority pollutants.

 Hydromorphological quality elements

The ecological classification system required under the WFD describes hydromorphological elements as 'supporting the biological elements'. This means assessing pressures and impacts on:

• ·         hydrological regime (quantity and dynamics of flow, connection to groundwater);
• ·         continuity (ability of sediment and migratory species to pass freely up and down rivers and laterally with the floodplain);
• ·         morphology (i.e. physical habitat – compositions of substrate, width/depth variation, structure of bed, banks and riparian zone).

For high status to be achieved, the WFD requires that there are no more than very minor human alterations to the hydromorphological quality elements. At good, moderate, poor and bad status, the required values for the hydromorphological quality elements must be such as to support the required biological quality element values for the relevant class Each of the four surface water categories is ascribed specific hydromorphological quality elements.

• ·         Rivers - depth and width variation; structure and substrate of the river bed; structure of the riparian zone; river continuity.
• ·         Lakes - depth variation; quantity, structure and substrate of the bed; structure of the lake shore.
• ·         Transitional waters (estuaries) - depth variation; quantity, structure and substrate of the bed; structure of the intertidal zone.
• ·         Coastal waters - depth variation; structure and substrate of the coastal bed; structure of the intertidal zone.

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) allows Member States (MS) to designate some of their surface waters as heavily modified water bodies (HMWB) or artificial water bodies (AWB), for heavily modified and artificial water bodies the ecological potential should be determined. Member States will need to meet the good ecological potential (GEP) criterion for ecosystems of HMWBs and AWBs rather than good ecological status as for natural type water bodies.  The objective of GEP is similar to good status but takes into account the constraints imposed by social and/or economic uses. 

 A heavily modified water body (HMWB) refers to a body of surface water that as a result of physical alteration by human activity is substantially changed in character. A surface water body is considered as artificial (AWB) when created by human activity. According to WFD Article 2 and 4(3), EU MS may designate a body of surface water as artificial or heavily modified, when:

• ·         its hydromorphological characteristics have substantially changed so that good ecological status cannot be achieved and ensured;
• ·         the changes needed to the hydromorphological characteristics to achieve good ecological status would have a significant adverse effect on the wider environment or specific uses;
• ·         the beneficial objectives served by the artificial or modified characteristics of the water bodyreasonably cannot be achieved by a better environmental option, which is:
  • technical feasible and/or
  • not disproportionate costly.

 The designation of a water body as heavily modified or artificial means that instead of ecological status, an alternative environmental objective, namely ecological potential, has to be achieved for those water bodies, as well as good chemical status.