Public health and environmental protection in European water policies

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Dear Colleague,

The draft of the forthcoming 2016 EEA Report ‘Public health and environmental protection in European water policies’ (planned for publication in the autumn) is now available for EIONET consultation and review. Please note that the deadline for providing feedback is 12th August 2016.

The report considers three pieces of EU water legislation targeted at particular sectors: the Bathing Water Directive, the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive and the Drinking Water Directive, together termed the “water industry directives”. Their objectives towards specific issues are considered in the context of the Water Framework Directive.  The assessment builds upon reports required under the sectoral legislation, summaries of which are provided in the annex. Common features towards public health, environmental protection and informing the public are identified and considered in the context of the WFD, which, as a framework directive conceived after much of the sectoral legislation, bridges over many objectives of the water industry directives.

As a key EEA stakeholder, I would appreciate if you could consider and review this draft and provide your comments, with a focus on the overview of common features (Chapter 1), selected pollution reduction measures in (Chapters 2 and 3), provision of information (Chapter 4) and conclusions (chapter 5). The annexes, based on sectoral reports, contain country comparisons (bathing water, A1.4; drinking water, A2.2, A2.3; urban wastewater, A3.3, A3.4) so please also review these. As the case studies currently included are rather limited geographically (Germany, Ireland and United Kingdom) I would also appreciate your suggestions for suitable examples from elsewhere. Improvements in the formatting and layout are intended following this consultation.

The invitation to review has been sent to the EIONET National Reference Centres on Water Quality and on Emissions and National Focal Points, the European Commission services and other international organisations and experts.

To submit your comments please use your EIONET account to access the online review platform at http://forum.eionet.europa.eu/nrc-eionet-freshwater/library/public-health-and-environmental-quality-european-water-policies/consultation

If you wish to familiarise yourself with the report before commenting a pdf version of the report can be found on the online review platform as well. We would however like to ask you to provide your comments via the online review platform and not via email based on the pdf file. Use of the online platform enables us to review your comments systematically.

The access to provide comments has been limited to the users in this invitation. However, you can invite other Eionet colleagues by forwarding the link above to them. After they open the link and log in with their Eionet account, a button “Apply for reviewer rights” will appear.

In case you have forgotten your EIONET Account credentials, you can recover them using this form: http://www.eionet.europa.eu/password-reset

For technical support, please contact EIONET helpdesk at: helpdesk@eionet.europa.eu  

I hope you find the draft report informative look forward to receiving your comments. If you have any questions regarding the report please do not hesitate to get in contact with myself (Caroline.Whalley@eea.europa.eu) or Stéphane Isoard (Stephane.Isoard@eea.europa.eu).

With intentions towards an interesting and constructive collaboration,

Yours sincerely,

Caroline Whalley

Files attached to this consultation
Section Comments
Executive summary 6
Acronyms and abbreviations 0
1. Overview of EU water-related legislation to protect human health and the aquatic environment 38
2. Protecting surface waters from nutrient and organic pollution 42
3 Protecting drinking water and bathing water from microbial pollution 10
4 Information to the public 6
5 Conclusions 6
References 0
Annex: Results reported under the three water industry directives 0
A1 Bathing Water Directive 20
A2 Drinking Water Directive 14
A3 Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive 8