The draft directive is considered the final major piece of legislation needed to support the Water Framework Directive (WFD), the most substantial piece of EC water legislation to date, which sets out a strategy for dealing with chemical pollution of water. The WFD requires that all EU waters should achieve good status by 2015.
The draft EQS directive, which is a "daughter" to the WFD, lays down environmental quality standards for 33 priority substances and other pollutants with a view to achieving good surface water chemical status. More specifically, the proposed directive will set limits on concentrations in surface waters of pesticides, heavy metals and other chemical substances that pose a particular risk to animal and plant life in the aquatic environment and to human health.
The key issues from the text adopted by the Council are provided below:
Sediment and biota:
- Member states (MS) may opt to apply EQS for sediment and biota instead of standards for water but with several conditions.
- MS shall arrange long term trend analysis for priority substances that tend to accumulate in sediment and/or biota and take measures aimed at ensuring that such concentrations do not significantly increase
Mixing zones (former transitional areas of excedance):
- MS may designate mixing zones adjacent to points of discharge (in that case, MS shall include a description of approaches and methodology applied)
- The extent of mixing zones shall be restricted to the proximity of the point of discharge and proportionate (taking into account permits, authorisations and in accordance with the application of best available techniques).
- The proposal does not contain any obligation or deadline to reduce the number or extent of mixing zones (as requested by the European Parliament (EP)).
List of priority substances (PS) and priority hazardous substances (PHS):
- Pollutants and standards are the same as proposed by the Commission, the only difference being that the list of 8 pollutants included in part B of the Commission proposal have been merged with the list of PS. The list has not been extended with new pollutants as requested by the EP.
- To determine compliance with EQS-MAC (maximum allowable concentration), MS may introduce statistical methods, such as percentile calculation, to ensure an acceptable level of confidence and precision
Metals:
- For metals, EQS are expressed as dissolved concentration. When assessing results against EQS, MS may take into account natural background concentrations for metals and their compounds (if they prevent compliance with the EQS value) and hardness, pH or other water quality parameters that affect the bioavailability of metals.
With Parliament and Council having issued their respective opinions on this aspect of water policy a common position will be developed and will provide the focus of further discussion during the second stage of the co-decision procedure.