THE EU WATER FRAMEWORK DIRECTIVE

SEMINAR ON THE IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS 30TH JUNE 2004
(Click on Appendices below to view respective links)

A seminar on the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) was held in the Tullamore Court Hotel on Wednesday 30th June 2004 hosted by the Dept of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. The conference was attended by 122 delegates, 107 from Industry and State organisations and 15 from the NGO sector. Apart from John Crudden, IFPAC Environment Officer, no other representative attended from the national angling organisations. Con McCole attended representing the Carra/Mask/Corrib Water Group and one other person attended representing the Conn/Cullen Anglers Federation.

John Saddlier from the Dept of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government gave an overview of the process to date, a repeat of the introduction given in Mullingar. The big announcement was the imminent establishment of the River Basin District Advisory Councils (RBDAC) and the publication of the consultation paper on Public Participation (see www.wfdireland.ie). Under Article 14 of the Directive the Government is obliged to encourage the participation of all interested parties in the implementation process. To that end they have conducted a number of seminars around the country and all relevant material is published on the above website. A working group on participation has made a number of recommendations on how the public can be involved through the Advisory Councils.
A summary of the report of the WG is set out Appendix A.

The regulations require the establishment of an RBDAC in each RBD by 22nd December 2004. This body will be a permanent forum for direct dialogue and interaction between interested parties and the relevant public bodies and will be in place for 5 years and renewed every 5 years thereafter. The DoE has suggested guidelines on the membership of these RBDAC's. These guidelines are set out in Appendix B.


Finally the document calls for comments and sets out 5 general questions to be answered. These are set out in Appendix C.

Public participation with government and public authorities is already in place in a number of areas. At national level it has been developed in the context of negotiating national wage agreements and at local level by a number of initiatives given statutory effect by the Local Government Act 2001. The various avenues for public participation presently in place are set out in Appendix D.

Jim Bowman delivered a presentation on the implementation process work being done by the EPA. All waters (groundwater, surface and esturine) in the country had now been classified according to their status ie rivers, lakes, transition, coastal, artificial water bodies (AWB) and heavily modifies water bodies (HMWB). Each of these has in turn been given a biological clasification. In the case of lakes there are 14 lake types in Ireland. Alkaline: low, moderate, high, depth: shallow <4m, deep >4m, size: small <50Ha, large >50Ha, Turloughs, and lakes above an altitude of 300m. There are 15 classes of rivers under 4 headings, alkaline, flow rate, size and peat/non-peat. There are 4 coastal water types.

Grace Glasgow of the South East RBD delivered a presentation on the chemical clasification of all surface waters which must be determined by end 2005. A National Dangerous Substances Expert Group was established to look into implementing this process. An audit of all chemicals being used in Irish industry has been established. Under the Directive 41 Priority Hazardous Substances are legislated for. The Expert Group has identified a further 161 other substances which they deem as suitable candidates for monitoring. The next step is to test these substances for their potential harm to the aquatic environment. To this end the National Substance Screening Monitoring Programme is being established. Sampling will be introduced on a phased basis close to major population centres as well as at locations close to concentrated areas of agricultural development. 17 sites have been selected. See Appendix E. Interested parties may make submissions and observations on the document which can be downloaded from www.wfdireland.ie.

Questions/Comments:
Does IFPAC or any of its members wish to be actively involved in the Advisory Councils ? If so then there is just one avenue open. People must be either members of Local Authority Strategic Policy Committees, Local Authority Community and Voluntary Fora or are members of County Development Boards and get nominated by a Local Authority. The eNGO's are very well organised with guaranteed funding to participate. Can we in the recreational pillar organise ourselves on a similar basis and look for the same level of funding? If one of our members gets nominated can he claim expenses for participating and from where?

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