The reason

The WFD (European Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC) reorganises water protection in Europe and asks for programmes of measures i. a. in Article 11, 3L   

a) to prevent significant losses of pollutants from technical installations,
b) to prevent and/or to reduce the impact of accidental pollution incidents for example as a result of floods,
c) including through systems to detect or give warning of such events
d) including, in the case of accidents which could not reasonably have been foreseen, all appropriate measures to reduce the risk to aquatic ecosystems.
 
To put these requirements of the WFD into practice, adequate strategies have to be developed that take into account the respective degree of water protection with respect to accidental water pollutions in the context of national and European regulations.

The necessity

The WFD targets definite steps of procedure to achieve its goals within a mandatory and comparatively tight timetable. At the level of the German Länder (federal states) there exist a number of drafts concerning programmes of measures. All of these exclusively deal with traditional measures of hydraulic engineering and reduction/prevention of emissions aiming at improvements of the ecological and chemical status, they completely ignore topics of accident prevention, damage management, contingency planning etc.

On the other side the international commissions for the protection of the major European rivers practise contingency planning at a high standard, but as far as known the WFD does not play a major role in this. There also may be deficiencies at the level of the acting local authorities.

The objective

The realisation

Workshop

In Schkopau at November 29th to 30th a workshop was held where the project and the results reached so far were presented. Project members and external experts informed about models for and status of the implementation of WFD Article 11, 3L as well as technical and conceptual elements to be taken into account when implementing it.

In the final session the project members presented a first scheme of a set of measures for the implementation of WFD Article 11, 3L which was discussed in detail. The constructive contributions and helpful hints are valuable input to the project!

All presentations can be downloaded - go to “Documents” in the menu!