1. Overview of EU water-related legislation to protect human health and the aquatic environment

1.1.1 Legislative context

Water is an essential resource. Managing it to provide safe supplies is a fundamental requirement for human civilisation. Accordingly, ‘to safeguard the Union’s citizens from environment-related pressures and risks to health and wellbeing’ is an integral part of the EU’s environmental policy (EC, 2013). The Seventh Environment Action Programme (EAP) outlines that in its third objective (1386/2013/EU).

Over the years, the EU has adopted a suite of legislation that aims to protect and manage European waters. This started in 1976 with the first Bathing Water Directive, revised in 2006 (BWD, 2006/7/EC; EC, 2006), followed by the first Groundwater Directive in 1979 (80/68/EEC). In the 1990s, the Nitrates Directive (NiD, 91/676/EEC; EC, 1991a), the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive (UWWTD, 91/271/EEC; EC, 1991b) and the Drinking Water Directive (DWD, 98/83/EC; EC, 1998) came into force. The UWWTD, BWD and DWD continued to focus on protecting human health, whereas the NiD targeted agriculture as the source of emission for protecting aquatic resources.

The Water Framework Directive (WFD, 2000/60/EC; EC, 2000) introduced a more holistic approach to ecosystem-based management in 2000. It focuses on the multiple relationships between the many different causes of pollution and their various impacts on water in a river basin. The WFD aims to ensure that human use of water is compatible with the environment’s own needs. The WFD uses the ‘good status’ standard to indicate if there is enough water of sufficient quality to support both ecosystems and human societies. The WFD, as a framework directive, provides a context for more targeted legislation, such as the revised Groundwater Directive (2006/118/EC). This established a system for setting groundwater quality standards and introducing measures to prevent or limit pollution of groundwater.

1.1.2    Water management and the water cycle

Looking at humans’ direct interaction with water, we could consider household and urban water management as a more or less distinct sub-cycle of the natural water cycle: drinking water is abstracted from the ground- or surface water, treated, and made available in households and businesses; and after use and treatment it is discharged again into the environment.

This human sub-cycle is, of course, part of the wider natural water cycle. Human uses and discharges strongly influence water ecosystems and their status and functionality. This has implications for both society and nature. Water can directly affect human health in two ways: if people drink the water or if they come into direct contact with it by swimming, and only where there is sufficient water of sufficient quality for the health of the ecosystem can we ensure human health as well.

The three directives, UWWTD, DWD and BWD are sometimes called ‘the water industry directives’. Each of them focuses on managing its respective part of the human water cycle. They provide a monitoring framework to document the quality of the water abstracted and used by humans, and discharged afterwards, and the quality of the water available for recreational purposes. Member States must report key parameters of water quality and management measures under these directives.

The water industry directives all aim to protect consumers and water users, including the environment, against harmful effects. Management measures are taken in different places as the compliance points for each of the Directives are different, but nevertheless there are complementarities between them, such as improving wastewater treatment under UWWTD and improved bathing water quality. The UWWTD ensures that all significant discharges of sewage from domestic and industrial sectors undergo treatment before release into surface water. The BWD and the DWD aim to improve bathing and drinking water; they require and facilitate water monitoring and management measures and make information easily and transparently available to the public (EC, 2012).

To help understand the (spatial) scopes of the three different directives, Figure 1.1 shows the points of compliance within a hydrological system in a schematic way. The UWWTD compliance point is at the outlet of the treatment plant, where European water quality standards need to be met. This point complies with the emission principle. Wastewater, probably with a high concentration of nutrients and/or pathogenic microorganisms, reaches a river or lake with a bathing area. This area must comply with the BWD. An abstraction point for raw water to be treated for the purpose of drinking complies with the WFD (Article 7), whereas compliance with DWD requirements is at the point where the consumer takes the water from the tap. This takes into account any water treatment and other water quality issues arising from transmission through any distribution and storage facilities.

Figure 1.1 Relative scopes of UWWTD, BWD, WFD (Article 7) and DWD

1.1.3    Public interest

With their focus on the human part of the water cycle, and the quality of water for human consumption and use, the three water industry directives are also at the centre of public interest. The first successful European citizens’ initiative, the Right2Water initiative, called on the European Commission (EC) to ensure that all EU citizens enjoy the right to water and sanitation at affordable prices.

In response to the European citizens’ initiative, the EC identified a set of priorities and actions at EU or national level to address the concerns motivating this call for action. One focus is to improve information for citizens by further developing streamlined and more transparent data management and disseminating information about urban wastewater and drinking water. They also promote structured dialogue between stakeholders on transparency in the water sector, and aim to improve the transparency and accountability of water services providers by giving citizens access to comparable data on key economic and quality indicators.

1.2.1     Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive

The UWWTD regulates urban wastewater collection, treatment and discharge as well as treatment and discharge from the agriculture and food sectors. It requires the collection and treatment of wastewater in all agglomerations of more than 2 000 population equivalents (p.e.) (see Annex A 3.1), and more advanced treatment for agglomerations of more than 10 000 p.e.or in designated sensitive areas (for more information on the UWWTD, see Annex A3).

The main objectives of the directive are to increase the population connected to wastewater collection and urban wastewater treatment plants, and to expand more stringent wastewater treatment. To reach these objectives, the directive lays down four main principles: (a) planning, (b) regulation, (c) monitoring and (d) information and reporting. Water managers and responsible authorities need to develop and implement management strategies for each of these principles.

Besides designating sensitive areas and identifying the relevant hydraulic catchment areas, planning aspects include establishing a technical and financial programme for constructing sewage collection systems, if needed, and planning treatment that is more stringent than ‘secondary treatment’ in larger agglomerations.

The main regulatory tools are the authorisation and regulation of wastewater. In addition, the UWWTD requires measures to limit pollution by waters coming from storm water overflows, and technical requirements for the design, construction, operation and maintenance of plants that treat urban wastewater.

Monitoring programmes need to be in place and must correspond to the directive’s requirements. Member States must also ensure monitoring of both discharges from urban wastewater treatment plants and receiving waters (water bodies that receive discharges of wastewater). A well-established monitoring system ensures an informed assessment of the sewerage system and its treatment capacity.

Information and reporting are principal management tools. Member States need mechanisms to allow cooperation and exchange of information with each other (e.g. for benchmarking or if discharges of wastewater have an effect on water quality across a border). National reports and map viewers are also suitable and useful to present ratings and results transparently, both to the EC and to the general public.

1.2.2     Bathing Water Directive

The BWD safeguards public health and protects the aquatic environment in coastal and inland areas from pollution. To manage water quality, Member States monitor bathing water during the bathing season. They take samples of bathing water and analyse them to assess the concentrations of two bacteria, Escherichia coli and intestinal enterococci. This has to happen once a month during the bathing season, with a minimum of four samples per season collected at each bathing water site.

Throughout the bathing season, local or national governments publish monitoring results to inform the public about possible health risks when bathing. For all of their bathing water sites, countries also prepare bathing water profiles and ensure they are available to the public. These are descriptions of physical and hydrological conditions, covering a single site or contiguous sites. They also list potential impacts on water quality and potential threats to it. At the end of each bathing season, Member State authorities send their data to the EC and the EEA. Assessment results are then published in national reports, EU reports and interactive viewers, and the BWD data viewer.

A revised BWD (2006/7/EC) was due for implementation by Member States by December 2014. It is fully integrated within the body of measures protecting the quality of EU waters through the WFD, putting greater emphasis on the integrated management of bathing water. The effect is to encourage Member States to implement management measures to improve quality to at least ‘good’ or even ‘excellent’ (EEA, 2016).

Mitigation measures to reduce health risks may include construction of adequate wastewater treatment plants. Building sewage collection and treatment systems, ensuring compliance of emission concentrations and removing sediment are very important management actions to improve bathing water quality. Many cases of poor quality and non-compliance are linked to short-term pollution and cases of storm water overflow. Therefore, depending on water status, management measures might also include investigating the sewer network in the vicinity of the bathing water site, together with monitoring surface waters in the vicinity of the bathing water. Bathing water sites subject to such measures might be temporarily closed for part or all of the bathing season.

When extreme events or accidents occur (such as heavy rain, sewage spills, hazardous waste spills) Member States must impose temporary management measures to protect bathers’ health. In most cases, this means that local authorities must temporarily close bathing water locations or, at the very least, warn bathers where areas are affected.

The authorities can also close bathing water sites for other reasons, such as dangerous access to the bathing water, damaged infrastructure surrounding it, engineering works at or near the location, or a reduction in the water level of a reservoir. In some cases, the reason might be purely administrative or legal. If a bathing area is temporarily closed for unexpected or uncontrollable reasons, the quality of its water must still be monitored.

1.2.3     Drinking Water Directive

The DWD aims to ensure that water intended for human consumption is safe. It must be free of any microorganisms, parasites or substances that could potentially endanger human health. The directive applies to all water intended for human consumption apart from natural mineral waters and waters that are medicinal products.

The directive sets quality standards for drinking water at the tap (microbiological, chemical and indicator parameters) and obliges Member States to monitor drinking water quality regularly, to take remedial action (measures) if the monitoring reveals problems and to provide consumers with adequate and up-to-date information on their drinking water quality (see Annex A2). Tools for managing drinking water quality are focused on monitoring, measures and information to the public.

Depending on the monitoring strategy, the DWD obliges Member States to carry out a risk assessment for all drinking water quality parameters. This means that the directive permits exceptions to monitoring, either by reducing the frequency or by completely removing parameters from the monitoring programme. This is possible if (a) the values of the results obtained from sampling taken during a period of at least 2 successive years are constant and significantly better than the limits and (b) no factor is likely to cause a deterioration of the quality of the water.

Measures need to be implemented if the quality of drinking water needs further improvement. If the measures are related to treatment or the distribution network, the water supplier is responsible for ensuring high drinking water quality. If pollution comes from the catchment area, the supplier needs to coordinate with other institutions or stakeholders. Agriculture is the main cause of groundwater and surface water pollution, so water suppliers often contract with farmers to ensure the protection of water sources.

This can involve changes in management conditions, such as organic farming or other low-impact methods. Some Member States (e.g. Germany) allow water suppliers to pass on to water consumers the costs of compensating farmers for the changes in management practices. This is in the interest of efficiency, because it is much more costly to treat and clean the drinking water than to pay to reduce pollution at its origin (Kraemer et al., 2007).

Furthermore, the DWD requests that authorities make the results of drinking water quality tests available to the public. For this, a national triennial report needs to be published. Because of the diverse administrative structures in Member States and the multitude of water suppliers, few countries have a national centralised system for publishing drinking water quality on a level of water supply zones, like presented in Austria (http://www.trinkwasserinfo.at/trinkwasserdatenbank/). There is also no system at the European scale. National country reports based on the triennial reporting results are available at the respective Commission website.

Besides the directive’s obligations on management strategies, most Member States also follow the water safety planning (WSP) approach based on a guideline of the World Health Organization (WHO, 2004, 2011; EC, 2014).

The current DWD does not specifically note the WSP approach but the WHO recommends it to enable the management of drinking water quality in a holistic and systematic way that assesses and mitigates all risks from catchment to consumer. The approach requires water supply operators to carry out a comprehensive risk assessment for each treatment works and its connected supply system from source to tap, covering all hazards and hazardous events.

1.2.4     Water Framework Directive

The WFD establishes a legal framework to protect and restore clean water across Europe and ensure its long-term, sustainable use. The directive establishes an innovative approach for water management based on river basins, the natural geographical and hydrological units, and sets specific deadlines for Member States to achieve ambitious environmental objectives for aquatic ecosystems. Under the directive, Member States should have aimed to achieve good status in all bodies of surface water and groundwater by 2015. Article 10 details the directive’s “combined approach for point and diffuse sources” and refers to several related directives, including the BWD, DWD and UWWTD. The directive regards implementation of these other directives as a minimum requirement (EC 2008a, b).

River basin management plans were elaborated for extensive river basin districts rather than for individual water bodies. Inasmuch as a river basin district comprises all of the water bodies in a river basin, in most cases two or more EU member states are in charge of protecting and managing the area.  A programme of measures describes the actions that must be taken to bring water bodies into good status, for which the key measures are as follows, e.g. improving hydromorphology via restoration; removing or scaling back migratory obstacles and transverse structures such as weirs so as to restore river continuity; and sewage treatment plant optimization; implementation of good agricultural practice to reduce chemical inputs into water bodies. All such measures must be commensurate with (a) the nature and scope of the anthropogenic pressures involved; and (b) existing water usage modalities.

Inasmuch as water protection is a community undertaking, in order to meet the WFD objectives the EU member states will need to coordinate their river basin management plans and programmes of measures in a cross-border fashion. Moreover, involvement of the general public is a key instrument of the WFD. A consultation entailed announcement of timeline and work programme; the key water management issues for each river basin district; and the draft river basin management plans.

1.3 Management Measures

The most significant reasons for failure of surface waters to achieve good ecological and/or good chemical status under the WFD are: hydro-morphological changes, such as building in riparian areas, canalisation and erection of barriers; diffuse water pollution from agricultural activities; discharge of urban wastewater. High inflow of nutrients or chemicals leads to eutrophication, oxygen depletion and accelerated loss of biodiversity, and could result in the loss of viable bathing water and good-quality raw water sources for the drinking water supply. Therefore, the UWWTD has an important link to public health. Furthermore, management under the UWWTD has a strong link with the WFD, for example by upgrading or constructing wastewater treatment plants to reach good ecological or chemical status. Therefore measures of the UWWTD are listed as ‘basic measures’ tackling the source of surface water pollution under the WFD, which clearly uses its measures to address the point source of pollution.

Bathing waters are one of the protected areas under the WFD, which means that Member States must achieve compliance with the standards and objectives for each protected area by 2015 (unless otherwise specified in the legislation). The BWD also complements the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), in contributing to reaching good environmental status by 2020. All directives have clear links given that they consider monitoring stations, status assessment and causes of non-compliance. Measures under the WFD could also be adapted to improve bathing water quality in general and to reduce eutrophication on a larger scale. An example for the implementation of measures to protect and increase bathing water quality is given in Box 1‑2.

Drinking water is also a protected area under the WFD. Measures under the WFD related to drinking water mainly focus on reducing nutrient and pesticide pollution from agricultural activities in protected areas. These measures could also be implemented from the point of view of the DWD (catchment-related remedial actions). An example of an integrated management to ensure high drinking water quality is given in Box 1‑1.   

Box 1‑1 Integrated management: the example from Lake Constance

Lake Constance is a natural lake that spans the borders of Germany, Switzerland and Austria. It is central Europe’s third-largest lake, approximately 570 km² in area and with an average depth of 90 m. Over 500 people per square kilometre live along the shoreline of the lake.

The International Commission for the protection of Lake Constance, instituted in 1959, is responsible for the target-oriented implementation of measures. The Commission’s aims are to supply high-quality drinking water, protect the flora and fauna of the lake and catchment ecosystem, and maintain tourism. It needs to consider all these aims while complying with the DWD, BWD, UWWTD and WFD.

The main uses of the lake and its catchment area are drinking water, fisheries, tourism, agriculture, forestry, habitats for flora and fauna, transport and shipping. The main stressors on the lake are the inflow of highly polluted water from point and non-point sources.

The lake supplies 17 million m³ of drinking water per year to 320 towns and communities with a total of approximately 4 million inhabitants. That is the responsibility of the Lake Constance Water Supply Authority (BWW). Tourism, with approximately 10 million overnight stays and about 27 million day-trippers, is among the most significant economic factors in the German portion of the Lake Constance region (Hammerl and Gattenhoehner, 2003).

Lake Constance provides high quality drinking water to the Northern lake catchment, reaching all the way up to the city of Stuttgart. The Lake Constance Water Supply Company (Bodensee Wasserversorgung), located on the Sipplinger mountain right above the lake, supplies 17 million m³ of drinking water per year to 320 municipalities with a total of approximately 4 million inhabitants. Water demand is also high due to tourism, with approximately 10 million overnight stays and about 27 million daily visitors. Tourism is among the most significant economic factor in the German part of the Lake Constance region (Hammerl and Gattenhoehner, 2003).

The central challenge in this region is to ensure the quality of drinking water. In the 1950s, Lake Constance was in a nutrient poor (“oligotrophic”) state. The phosphorus concentration  increased to make the lake highly nutrient rich (“eutrophic”) because of an enormous inflow of untreated urban wastewater. This resulted in algal blooms, anoxic conditions in the deeper layers of the lake, and death of fish. The lake threatened to ‘tip over’. Thanks to international cooperation and investments totalling over EUR 5 billion in constructing and modernising sewage channels’ and 220 water treatment plants, the phosphorus level returned to < 10 mg/m³ in 2013 (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Total phosphorus concentration (annual mean) of Lake Constance.

Data source: International Commission for the Protection of Lake Constance (2013).

Besides measures to build up wastewater treatment plants, there were, and still are, several measures within the catchment to reduce nutrient input from agriculture or to restore the lake’s banks. Furthermore, a drinking water protection area of 8.4 km² near the abstraction points was legally specified in 1987. Future challenges for the integrated management of Lake Constance will be the effects of climate change and micropollutants.

1.4 Relationships between the water industry directives and the WFD

The main aim of European water policy is to ensure that sufficient good-quality water is available for people’s needs and for the environment.  

The WFD promotes sustainable water use based on the long-term protection of water resources. In so doing, it contributes to the provision of sufficient supplies of good-quality bathing water and high-quality sources of drinking water intended for human consumption.

In the legislation, there is no direct link between drinking water quality and surface water or groundwater status under the WFD. The DWD considers the raw water from abstraction, through storage and treatment, to the drinking water distribution system and final delivery to the consumer at the tap. The river basin management plan under the WFD covers the water abstraction source, the water supply zone, its catchment and the wider environment within the area of the river basin, including bathing waters as well as point source pollution from domestic or industrial wastewater treatment plants.

Water from the environment supplies drinking water. Drinking water is treated to protect people from the risks presented by raw water. The elements that the DWD and WFD have in common are the raw water source and its catchment on a broader scale. The consequence of low quality raw water is more investment in treatment or water transfers. Both of these potentially result in higher energy use, more carbon emissions and higher prices for consumers.

Under the WFD regime, full implementation of basic measures is required, including compliance with the UWWTD. Going beyond the requirements of the UWWTD to improve wastewater treatment may be identified in river basin management plans as necessary for a waterbody to reach good status. Meanwhile, the improvements to a wastewater treatment plant undertaken to meet the UWWTD could feed into an overall improvement in status under the WFD.

Rather than aiming to meet a particular objective under a water industry directive in isolation, considering the synergies between each of the water industry directives and the WFD could lead to benefits such as more cost-effective measures, as well as improvement of the status and quality of waters.

Box 1‑2 Improvement in bathing water quality: Blackpool, north-west England

Tourism plays a major part in the economy along much of the Fylde coast of north-west England. This region, bounded by Fleetwood to the north and the Ribble estuary to the south, has four main population centres: Blackpool; Lytham St Annes; Southport; and Preston, located further inland. Blackpool is one of the country's most famous resorts and is visited by over 17 million people a year. The area had a long history of water quality problems, which had increasingly begun to threaten the local tourist industry.

A major programme of improvements was required. United Utilities have implemented a number of co-ordinated schemes to enhance sewerage infrastructures and increase wastewater treatment capability in order to address the quality of bathing water along this part of the coast. These included the provision of improved disinfection facilities and substantially increased storage for stormwater, together with the upgrading of treatment works and changes to outfall arrangements. Over the last 20 years, GBP 1 billion were spent improving the region's bathing water sites, with plans to invest a further GBP 250 million between 2015 and 2020.

In 1988, just six of the then 29 waters monitored in the region met bathing water guidelines. By 2014, all bathing water sites were of the necessary standard (source: United Utilities bathing water homepage: http://www.unitedutilities.com/Bathing-waters.aspx.).